I watched the movie “Devil” the other day.
After “Lady in the Water” I gave myself a directive never to watch another M.Night Shyamalan movie.
And I stuck to that. I skipped “The Happening” and “The Last Airbender” completely.
But then “Devil” came along. Shyamalan wrote the story but he didn’t write the screenplay and he didn’t direct. Give it a go, I thought.
The bad news is that I didn’t like it. To be more specific, the first 70 or so minutes of the movie is fine but the ending is so bad that it ruins the rest of the movie.
But I’m no critic so that’s just my own humble opinion.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 51% rating (43 like while 42 dislike).
IMDB gives it a 6.4 rating. And, despite my own assessment, most of the comments I read there were positive.
In relation to Shyamalan, I should elaborate a little. I LOVE “The Sixth Sense”. I own “Signs” on DVD. I went to the cinema to see “The Village”. So I was definitely a fan.
But the arc of his work has been unfortunate. Here is a list of his movies sorted by the rating on IMDB (I have removed the 2 movies where the release date predated TSS):
(8.20) - The Sixth Sense (1999)
(7.30) - Unbreakable (2000)
(6.80) - Signs (2002)
(6.50) - The Village (2004)
(6.40) - Devil (2010)
(5.80) - Stuart Little (1999)
(5.70) - Lady in the Water (2006)
(5.10) - The Happening (2008)
(4.50) - The Last Airbender (2010)
The inverse relationship between date and rating is hard to miss. The only consolation that can be taken from this list, I guess, is that Devil is a step in the right direction (actually it's almost exactly half way between his best and worst ratings).
So will I give “The Night Chronicles 2” a chance when it arrives? I’m afraid the answer is no unless there’s a huge amount of positive reaction to the movie.