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38Devil will do little to dispel the growing belief that Shyamalan is a one-trick pony whose horse has keeled over. The laughter during the trailer was sadly prescient; the film is a joke.
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40In the end, Devil feels like an ingenious short film pumped up for theatrical release. Shyamalan's story is sound, but the execution dragged me to hell and left me there wondering if his much-rumored sequel to "Unbreakable" was ever going to arrive.
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25Perhaps someday, in the greatest twist of all, Shyamalan will be remembered as the Hitchcock of the early 21st century. Until then, movies like Devil will be misunderstood as schlock.
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50A serviceable burst of high-end hokum, Devil classes up a flimsy, religion-themed plot (by M. Night Shyamalan) with the kind of limber cinematography only someone like Tak Fujimoto can deliver.
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60Devil is nothing very special or original, but it gets the job done briskly and economically.
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50Devil is the sort of story Rod Serling would have taken for a spin in "The Twilight Zone," back in the day. Shyamalan came up with the idea, produced it and got others to script and direct this 76 minute exercise in movie minimalism.
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50By the time the patented Shyamalan Extra-Strength Third Act Twist is revealed, being asked to care about fate, redemption and forgiveness when a satan-in-an-elevator gimmick hasn't delivered is like getting medicinal aftertaste from what should have been a box of delectably fiery Red Hots.
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60There are a sufficient number of jolts thanks to quick edits and sound effects, plus the script's efficient structure.
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58A pocket-size supernatural thriller that plays a bit like Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" retold by an unstable Sunday School teacher.
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50Devil is a Night Gallery reject worth experiencing only to gape at a "spirituality" that falls somewhere between Dostoyevsky and Jack Chick, and to laugh that such daring feats of narrative illogic were undertaken with a straight face.
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30Devil packs a lot of business into 80 brisk minutes but is shockingly short on fun or fright.
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Guaranteed to keep you on tenterhooks from beginning to end - and without much gore. Dowdle and company trade in the usual trappings of the genre for a tantalizing blend of tension, suspense, and mystery.
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This is the sort of cut-rate cinematic Cheez Whiz that gives religious horror movies a bad name. Still, at least it's not "The Last Airbender."
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The great cinematographer Tak Fujimoto has the time of his life on this low-budget horror feature, playing with dolly shots, abrupt zooms, and negative space inside the widescreen frame, and the fun is infectious.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 45 out of 54
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Mixed: 6 out of 54
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Negative: 3 out of 54
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10
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The movie is a surprisingly decent one from M. Night Shyamalan from his current movies.
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10