So I went to see ‘Devil’ at the weekend, the first movie in the “Night Chronicles” series. These are stories from the mind of M Night Shyamalan. Now depending on how you feel about him, this is either a good or a bad idea. Some might feel that based on his recent track record, the last thing we need is more movies being made in his name. Luckily for us, this film was neither written or directed by him, probably to its benefit.

The film starts off well with an unnerving opening sequence – a panorama of downtown Philadelphia skyline (where else?!),with the twist being the image is inverted (this is also featured on the trailer). The idea behind the film is that whenever someone commits suicide it allows the devil to take a human form, and in this case there are five people stuck in a lift being taken out one by one and the viewer is left trying to work out the devil is amongst the group. As you might expect, given the creator behind the story, there’s a twist albeit not a very interesting one. The film was fine, watchable in fact but not enough to recommend going to see it at the cinema. In summary, this is TV movie of the week fare.

Anyway, back to Shyamalan. I was a fan after the his first few efforts – I particularly liked ‘Unbreakable’ and he seemed to be an accomplished young filmmaker in the mould of Spielberg, i.e. entertainment for the masses. However there has really been a law of diminishing returns with each of his films. ‘The Happening’ was frankly awful and although I haven’t seen it, ‘The Last Airbender’ was universally panned by critics. Frankly, I don’t think a film with that title could ever be a success, regardless  of subject matter! The guy needs a hit soon, otherwise surely the studios will stop funding his shitty vanity projects.

Maybe he is better off coming up with the ideas and letting others execute them. Devil has taken $24m at the box office to date, more than double its budget and the second in the Night Chronicles series has already been announced.

By means of finishing up this post, I should really recommend seeing ‘The Town’, the other movie I saw this weekend. An excellent film by a promising director in Ben Affleck.

- Baydr