Movie Review: Devil

First, five people are riding in an elevator together and it gets stuck. Then, they find out one of them is the devil. Great. No one on the building crew can figure out why the elevator is stuck in the first place – the mechanics seem fine. Then, {cue dramatic music} horrible things start happening. Of course, the people begin accusing each other of being the culprit. Each of the five has issues that we slowly learn about as the story progresses. The five are:

• A temporary security guard (Bokeem Woodbine) who works in the building and who has a police record.
• An irritating mattress salesman (Geoffrey Arend) who immediately begins getting on everyone’s nerves.
• A young woman named Sarah (Bojana Novakovic) who is caught in some lies.
• An older woman (Bojana Novakovic) who is a thief.
• A nervous young guy named Tony (Logan Marshall-Green) – no one is sure why he is even in the building.

Periodically, the lights in the elevator go out and every time they do, something bad happens. It’s done in classic Shyamalan fashion: the lights go out and you see quick flashes of what’s going on, and you hear shuffling sounds and lots of bumping around, but you can’t tell what it is or who’s doing it. These scenes are actually well done. Very thrilling.

Detective Bowden (Chris Messina) is brought in to try and solve a different mystery but soon ends up working on the elevator situation. Ramirez (Jacob Vargas) is a security guard who thinks something demonic is happening, although no one believes him initially.

Devil is more of a thriller than a horror movie, and it is very psychological. It is really not as bad as I feared it might be. The story unfolds in such a way that you are left guessing all the way to the end of the movie, although the ending does leave something to be desired. I give this movie two and a half Slurpees out of five.

* Devil * Director: John Erick Dowdle * Starring: Chris Messina, Bokeem Woodbine, Geoffrey Arend, Jenny O’Hara, Bojana Novakovic, Logan Marshall-Green * Writers: Brian Nelson (screenplay), M. Night Shyamalan (story) *  Time: 80 minutes * Rated PG-13 * Horror/Mystery/Thriller * Trailer *

M. Night’s Site part II

As promised, here are some additional hints for opening doors in the haunted house found in M. Night Shyamalan’s official web site.  Use your arrow keys to move around or click the little white dots on the red line at the bottom of the page to jump to particular areas in the house. You need to have Flash loaded to view the site correctly.

From the first floor, click the correct white dot on the red line at the bottom of the screen to get to the second floor. Here’s how I opened the doors to the rooms on the second floor. When you open the doors, click on items in the rooms to see notes from M. Night about his movies, the actors, etc. For each room, click the raven to exit.

• Lounge: On the bookcase to the left, tilt the book over on the fourth shelf down.
• Study: Click the key on the floor and drag it to the key hole in the door.
• Attic: Click the attic door in the ceiling. This was still being built when I visited the site.

M. Night’s Site

Speaking of M. Night Shyamalan, click here to view his official web site.  Not surprisingly, it has a haunted house theme. Use your arrow keys to move around or click the little white dots on the red line at the bottom of the page to jump to particular areas in the house. You can click on certain items for additional information (Hint: Look for the little puffs of smoke). You need to have Flash loaded to view the site correctly.

On the first floor, click white dots on the red line to view doors for certain M. Night movie titles. When you open the doors, you can click on items in the rooms to see notes about the movies from M. Night. Here’s how I opened the doors. For each room, click the raven to ext.

• Sixth Sense room: Click the dial on the thermostat on the wall and drag the dial all the way to the left.
• Signs: Click the glass of water on the table and drag it to the left to tip the glass and spill the water.
• Unbreakable: Click the shard of glass on the table and place it in the correct spot in the broken mirror .
• Lady in the Water: Click the five designs on the wallpaper to open the door. There are three designs to the left of the door and two to the right.
• The Village: Click the handle of the paint brush in the bucket of the red paint. Drag the brush over to the door and paint a red mark on the door to open it.
• The Happening: Click the floor vase on the left and drag it over to the puddle so water dripping down can water the plant.

I will post some hints for opening the doors on the second floor in a later posting.

Devil

Well, as I reported about a month ago, M. Night Shyamalan is co-producing a new movie coming out on September 17, 2010 called Devil.  According to IMDb, the plot of Devil is:

A group of people trapped in an elevator realize that the devil is among them.

The directors are Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle and the cast includes Chris Messina, Geoffrey Arend, Logan Marshall-Green, and Bojana Novakovic. The movie starts Friday, September 17, 2010 and it is rated PG-13.

I just saw the trailer on TV for the first time.  Here it is:

M. Night Shyamalan producing “Devil”

M. Night Shyamalan is co-producing a new movie coming out on September 17, 2010 called Devil.  According to IMDb, the plot of Devil is:

A group of people trapped in an elevator realize that the devil is among them.

The directors are Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle and the cast includes Chris Messina, Geoffrey Arend, Logan Marshall-Green, and Bojana Novakovic.

Here is the trailer for Devil:

Movie Review: The Last Airbender

If you felt a disturbance in the Force this week, it was The Last Airbender being unleashed onto an unsuspecting, hopeful world.  Somewhere, the ladies of Sex and the City 2 are pointing at M. Night Shyamalan and the cast of Airbender and laughing their Manolo Blahnik- wearin’ asses off. Airbender has managed to outdo SATC2 and win my vote for worst movie of the year (so far).

M. Night Shyamalan better be thankful The Last Airbender, which he wrote and directed, was released the same week as Twilight Eclipse, because now he can blame the poor box office showing on the fact that no movie can compete with Eclipse. Actually, Airbender will probably do well this first week, but once word-of-mouth starts spreading, it’s going to sink like an airbended rock. Imagine if you gave a $150M budget to a bunch of 12-year-olds and told them to make the movie. Let’s assume those kids could work the cameras and run the special effects software and everything; however, when they wrote the script, they used language that 12-year olds would use. The dialogue in this movie was astonishingly bad, simplistic and hokey, actually laughable at many (too many) points. I can’t believe this movie was released as-is.  How in the world did it get past the producers?  I digress…

I’ve never seen Avatar: The Last Airbender on Nickelodeon, so I can’t tell you if the storyline of the movie stays true to the TV show. Apparently, this movie is based on the first season of the show. Aang (Noah Ringer) is the young Avatar who is the only master of all four elements.  He has been called upon to help restore harmony between the Four Nations: Earth Kingdom, Air Nomads, Fire Nation, and Water Tribe. That’s a lot of responsibility for a 12-year-old and Aang can’t take the pressure, so he runs away.  He gets caught in a massive storm and is frozen for 100 years inside a giant ice ball with his flying bison, Appa.

Certain members of each of the tribes have the power to “bend” their element and use it in various ways, including as weapons, but Aang is the only one capable of bending air.  Katara (Nicola Peltz) is the last waterbender left in the Southern Water Tribe (don’t worry: there are plenty of waterbenders in other tribes). Katara and her brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) stumble upon the giant ice ball holding Aang and free him. Being frozen and all, he is still only 12 years old, and he doesn’t have one drop of water or ice on him even though a giant ice ball just exploded around him. There I go digressing again…

Anyway, the Fire Nation is not playing nice and has already wiped out or enslaved many of the other tribes in its quest to rule the world. Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) has been exiled from the Fire Nation for dishonoring himself and his family. Aang is Zuko’s ticket back into the family – all the prince has to do is capture Aang alive and take him back to the Fire Nation so they can, you know, kill him.  Then they will truly rule the world. Mwahaahaaha!

The martial arts moves are good in some spots, particularly one scene about midway through featuring Aang and a mysterious blue character. I saw the regular version and I know the visuals would have been much better in 3-D. The battles are sort of rock-paper-scissors games featuring the elements: earth walls blocking fire balls, floating water splashing fire out, air pushing water back. There is the classic showdown between good and evil at the end, but do not expect an amazing Lord of the Rings type battle. It ain’t happening.

I had to keep reminding myself who the target audience is. It’s billed as an Action/Adventure/Family/Fantasy. Key word: Family.  At the end of the movie, younger kids were doing karate moves in the theatre aisles, but the group of teenaged boys sitting behind us must have spewed out the word “stupid” about five times in three seconds. Ultimately, I think kids under twelve might enjoy it, but their parents would be ready to purposely hurl themselves in front of a fireball just to make this ridiculousness end.

It was so bad, it became very entertaining after awhile, but not in the way Shyamalan meant. I’m feeling a cult following coming. Or a drinking game of some kind: take a sip every time someone onscreen says something stupid, or says something not-so-stupid but says it in a stupid way.  You would be toasted by the end of the second scene.

I give this movie one Slurpee out of five, just to leave room in case a group of eight-year-olds are given a $150M budget and a camera and I need to give their movie half a Slurpee.

*BEGIN SPOILER ALERT {insert alarm sounds here}* The movie ended in such a way that makes it clear that there will be a second movie, so The Last Airbender is apparently not going to be the last. In fact, there is a $250M budget for a planned trilogy of movies. A trilogy! I wonder if they’ll still make the other two movies if this first one does as horribly as I think it will. Is it possible to release the second and third movies of a trilogy directly to DVD? Can we start a petition to block them from ever happening? *END SPOILER ALERT*

* The Last Airbender * Director: M. Night Shyamalan * Starring: Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz * Time: 102 minutes * Rated PG-13 * Trailers* Soundtrack *