The first movie in a trilogy produced (but not directed) by M Night Shyamalan from an original story by him (but not a script written by him).
The story: a group of strangers are trapped in an elevator and one of them might be the devil.
Was it good?
Almost. The movie actually has a lot of fun elements. It doesn't feel like SIXTH SENSE at all. In fact it feels more like a very contained, non-flashback, supernatural version of USUAL SUSPECTS. The story begins with the story of how the devil walks the earth to cause people to lose faith. He kills someone in front of a person who loves them so that person will lose faith and turn away from God. And these events begin with a suicide, which this movie also begins with. This also allows for detectives to come on scene so you are not actually inside the elevator the whole time. This inside/out helps make the movie move a lot and was a great choice. They also do some cool things building the story. They don't start with a lot of supernatural stuff. It starts normal -- a suicide, an elevator stopping -- and then they build into the supernatural stuff. There also is a nice element to the story within the story -- the idea of the devil walking the earth -- that gave the movie another layer that could have really worked for it.
However, the problem is that nothing quite connects in the movie. There that the devil kills a person in front of a loved one so that loved one will lose faith is interesting, and for a long time the movie seems to be building to that, but then it stops and becomes about the detective, whose wife and child were killed in a hit and run, and him finding forgiveness for his wife/son's killer. It's almost like the movie was driving to a dark ending (much like USUAL SUSPECTS where the devil disappears) and then suddenly wanted to be happy, or at least hopeful and so tacked on an ending that didn't really fit and hadn't be built to properly. Instead, they should have done what U-S did and drive to that last final moment where we see the completition of the idea.
There also the problem of the people in the elevator. None of them had a particlarly interesting story and their backstories come into play much too late. It feels like the writer had a lot of different elements and was struggling to juggle them all and in the end just didn't try. So the first quarter is the normal part. The second quarter is the what the hell is going on part. The third part is the devil part. And the fourth part it the detective part. It makes the movie feel jumbled and disoriented, and especially the switch from the question of the devil to the detective's forgiveness in the last act, makes the whole feel much less than the sum of the pieces.
Still, it had enough I'm not surprised that some people might like it, and I'll certainly watch the sequel. But it also doesn't work enough that I would recommend it.
*** AVOID ***
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