Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

When Jen and I decided to grab a couple movies at our nearest Red Box, we had several ideas for what we wanted to watch.  We initially did not see the coincidence in our choice of Buried and Devil and the surface-level similarity of people trapped in confined spaces.  After having watched both, I think that Buried will certainly need another watch through before I say more about it other than I thought it was very well done.  I will probably give Devil another viewing at some point as well, but my thoughts about the movie are easier to commit at the moment.

First of all, I had somewhat mixed feelings about the movie going into it.  It’s no secret that M. Night Shyamalan has done much to whittle away all of the cache he had with such movies as Signs, Unbreakable, and most notably The Sixth Sense.  This downward spiral has culminated for me with The Happening, a movie so utterly ridiculous that I can never take Mark Wahlberg seriously as an actor again.  Like many people I viewed the attachment of Shyamalan’s name to the movie as a negative rather than a positive.  On other hand, I knew that the movie was only conceived and produced by him, with the screenplay and directing done by others; thus, I also thought that, given an interesting premise, the movie would be worth seeing.

Overall, I enjoyed Devil; it certainly has its issues, but I came away from the movie with more positive feelings.  I thought the major theme of the movie was well presented and executed, and it also worked (for the most part) as a horror film, keeping the suspense up throughout.  Some of the imagery was interesting as well, although I have to admit that I’m a sucker to creepy things flashed quickly on a screen.

There were several missteps in the film, however, that keep it from being really good.  The narration by the security guard Ramirez, for instance, is completely unnecessary and more of a distraction than anything; everything he says in the narration could have been said by his character in actual dialogue or was not that important.  The movie also has one glaring example of “horror-movie idiot syndrome” where a character breaks one of the cardinal safety rules that I learned as a kid, and it’s so obviously a bad idea that it almost throws the movie.  I will admit, however, that one negative I had against the movie actually turned into an almost positive.  To avoid spoiling too much, I’ll just say that a character does something early on that struck me as a false move but that makes sense once I thought about it.

On the whole, I think Devil is worth a rental (especially if you’re only paying a buck to see it); I was well entertained.  It prompted some good, interesting conversation as well, which I always think is a positive, at least when it’s not making fun of the movie we’ve just watched.