On this particular day five, seemingly random, people end up trapped in an elevator in one of Philadelphia’s business buildings about forty floors in the air. The only problem is that someone in the elevator is the devil and the rest of them are there to be taken in a manner that puts the fear of God into the audience.

The thing about this movie is that even though it has Shyamalan’s name attached, which is definitely a red flag, it isn’t his movie. He wrote the basic story – which honestly we can’t tell how much of the film actually was – and he produced the film. The rest he delegated to other writers and a director that even though he hasn’t wowed me yet he definitely has a lot more clout in the world of cinema than his boss.

The film knows what it is and never tries to deviate away from its core. The film is a claustrophobic thriller which isn’t all that mentally stimulating but does its best to never slow down so that you get so wrapped up in the idea of who’s doing all this? rather than caring about how horrible the acting and unquestionably missing story there is in the movie.

One thing that truly aggravated me while watching this movie is the overall story within a story kind of thing that Brian Nelson added to the film. With the introduction of Ramirez (Jacob Vargas) as the latino overly-religious security guard who’s watching over the event we get this believer versus the really good detective, Bowden (Chris Messina), who doesn’t believe in God and the devil.

The film opens with a voice over of Ramirez talking about the stories of the Devil that his grandmother used to tell him where it would always start with a suicide and then boom we get a suicide, then he would get a group of people together and they would all be killed by the end of the story. So the film has the option of following through on that promise and being completely transparent, or making a left turn at the very end and being frustrating. I won’t tell you what happens but the truth of the matter is that the end really doesn’t matter because as the credits begin to roll you’ve already forgotten everything about the movie and that’s its biggest strength.

While you never feel like your pocket’s been robbed by the movie you know that you didn’t get a grade A movie. The film remains firmly seated in its status of being a B movie that’s all about just randomly killing people and slowly giving tid bits about characters that you’re never going to care about.

IMDB says 6.5/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 55%

I say 5.5/10