As far as I can tell, M Night Shyamalan makes two kinds of movies: twist movies, and amazing-coincidence movies (I’m pretending The Last Airbender didn’t exist).

In the twist movies, we wander along with the plot until some kind of amazing twist jumps out and throws dirt in our eyes. The Sixth Sense and The Village are twist movies.

In amazing-coincidence movies, we wander along with the plot, and at the end – right about when you’d be expecting the handful of dirt – a domino line of seemingly unrelated or inconsequential plot elements falls into place, forming a giant, wondrous coincidence that solves all the problems of the movie. Signs and Unbreakable are amazing-coincidence movies. So is Devil.

Before I go too far, I should say that M. Night Shyamalan didn’t actually make Devil – he just wrote the story upon which it’s based. John Erick Dowdle was the director, so he owns a large share of the blame, I suppose. But the film still has Shyamalan’s scent all over it. Let’s just call them both responsible.

As far as acting and scripting go, Devil is about as much as one can expect from a horror movie these days. The characters are archetypal and not the least bit memorable, which is a blessing of sorts; good characters may have seemed incongruous set amidst a predictable plot filled with bad one-liners.  

About fifteen minutes into things, it seemed like the movie ran out of ideas and decided it just wanted to startle, rather than actually offer anything compelling with regards to plot. Movies that resort to loud noises and startles for their horror don’t win my affection, they just make me hate them. Think about it: if you were given a choice between two friends - one who could tell a frightening story with ambience and subtlety, or one that just hid behind every corner with a pair of symbols that they would smash together to startle you - which would you choose? I bet you’d go with the storyteller. Chances are the other guy would get punched in the face. I know I’d like to punch him in the face right now, and I haven’t even met him yet.

The film’s setting – primarily an elevator – does add an interesting twist to the mystery of the story. I can’t help but admit that the plot kept me guessing. Unfortunately, most of my guesses were more entertaining than the reality of the situation when all things were said and done.  I think a lot of this can be attributed to the amazing-coincidence nature of the film.

You see, the problem with amazing-coincidence films is that they don’t offer anything with which we real-world dwellers can identify.  Watching one is like stepping into an obsessive-compulsive person’s dreams - every minute and seemingly inconsequential plot fragment has its own neat cubby into which it will fall by the end of the story. Everything is folded into a clean package by one giant, wondrous – you guessed it – amazing-coincidence.  It’s been said a million times, but I’ll say it again: that’s not like real life.

Obviously, I don’t think movies should make the approximation of real life their main goal. I get real life every day – I don’t need to pay to see it on a screen. But I do think that movies need to have something with which the viewer can connect. It could be characters, or a certain situation, it could be a location; in other words, something that speaks to their real-life experience, whether it be in a humorous, horrific, or dramatic way. Whatever that element might be, Devil didn’t have it.

So for those of you that are keeping track, we’re two reviews into the fall semester, and it’s been one hit and one miss. It seems as though I tend to get burned an awful lot when I go to big budget movies, so perhaps I’ll try going a bit more low profile next weekend to see if I can’t find something with a little more character. We’ll see – I’ve got options and my sanity is still intact, somehow.

See you next week…