The concept was intriguing, so I was very eager to watch Devil. And I did like it on the whole. I was dubious though seeing as M Night Shyamalan was producing and writing, now I loved The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable and Signs and The Village had some good things too, but after that his films had ranged from strange to dire.

I think it was a good thing that Shyamalan produced and wrote this movie rather than directed, that way we could see more of the promising story-telling that he proved he was capable of with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, and less of the trying to do too much notion that spoilt The Village for example.

Devil is not a perfect movie, it is too short, the ending was rushed and abrupt and the character of Ramirez was rather annoying with the unintentionally funny bit with the pizza slice really jarring with the atmosphere. However it is smartly directed by John Erick Dowdle, the atmosphere is spooky and tense and the cinematography and sound effects are really effective.

The music score is does enhance the mood mostly, but there are times when it does get rather obvious. The dialogue is apart from a couple of cheesy and out of place moments with Ramirez taut and the story complete with a great idea is well paced and works very well generally. The characters are not the most memorable but they are more than the stereotypes that we found in The Happening and Lady in the Water, and the acting while not award-worthy is good with Chris Messina and Bojana Novakovic particularly noteworthy.

All in all, a decent film that falls slightly short of what it could've been, but it could've been much worse than it turned out. 6.5/10 Bethany Cox

Five people trapped in a lift, and one of them is the Devil. That's the storyline-in-a-nutshell of DEVIL, as written by M. Night Shyamalan, and it's a good one that makes maximum use of its single-setting scenario. This is a claustrophobic, twist-aplenty movie packed with taut dialogue and engaging characters.

The plotting, as it plays out, is pretty hard to guess and the movie never needs to resort to cheesy theatrics to impress, instead working via slow-building tension and sudden, trapped-in-the-dark horror scenes. The acting is fine, especially from the likes of Bokeem Woodbine and Bojana Novakovic, both 'possessed' with the ability to convince the audience that they're genuinely afraid. To say too much will be to spoil the experience, so I'll leave it at this: if you like good, simple, old-fashioned scare flicks then you'll love DEVIL.

M. Night Shyamalan has written this striped down story. Five strangers are trapped in an office elevator. There is already an unexplained death in the building. As people gets kill in the elevator, suspicions and tensions explode.

This is a tight little 80 minute movie. The style is sparse. There isn't much flash. The devil is mostly a play of lighting and sounds. It is well done and economically. The movie doesn't get bog down with a long boring introduction. I'm sure the haters will ridicule M Night's recent failures. It's easy to pile on, but this movie reminds us why his movies were first praised. It is a simple bed time horror story.