Devil - film review

Whilst on holiday recently, I had the opportunity to watch the recent movie Devil and I found I enjoyed it immensely. It’s a modern film, and yet it has some distinctly classic elements. So when, after watching it, I read about the film on the internet, I wasn’t surprised to learn that M. Night Shamaylan, one o the team behind the film, and famous for the spookiness of his work, acknowledged that the story involved a nod to Agatha Christie.

More than a single nod, in fact. The main story is a riff on And Then There Were None, but in the dialogue there is also a hint of the plot-line from The ABC Murders. Suffice to say that I thought the film-makers used the Christie inspiration pretty well.

The story is taut (the film only lasts 80 minutes, and the brevity of the film helps to ensure that the intensity of the narrative is maintained) and compelling. An elevator in a skyscraper gets stuck and it seems that Satan is in there along with the five passengers. One by one, they meet grisly ends.

None of the actors was familiar to me, but they all did a decent job, and I felt that the film was well done, and the story presented in compelling way. The claustrophobic environment of the elevator in particular is beautifully conveyed. Devil is a world away from Fatal Descent, an elevator based novel I discussed here recently. But it’s much better than the Golden Age book by John Rhode and Carter Dickson, and, despite the lurid nature of the plot, it is strangely more credible.

Forgotten Book - Fatal Descent

It is rare for two crime writers who have established significant personal reputations to collaborate on a novel. But there are some notable examples, and one of them is my choice for today's Forgotten Book, Fatal Descent. The authors were an Englishman and an American who became good friends through their membership of the Detection Club. The Englishman was John Rhode, and American John Dickson Carr, here writing under his alternative pen-name of Carter Dickson.

The story is set in the offices of a publishing magnate, who is duly found dead in his own personal elevator – which nobody else was allowed to travel in. But no weapon can be found, although the skylight of the elevator has been damaged, and there is no doubt either that he has been shot to death or that it is a case of murder and suicide.

As you might expect from these two authors, it is a classic "impossible crime" situation, and I thought that the solution was highly ingenious, although it depended upon so much mechanical cleverness that there was no chance that I would ever have guessed how it was done. Once you knew how, you knew who, and I was not convinced that the authors played entirely fair with regard to the question of motive, giving no real details of what drove the killer before the final explanation.

A very similar setting was used by Kenneth Fearing in that wonderful novel, later wonderfully filmed, The Big Clock. But in Fatal Descent, the authors make no attempt to exploit the setting for its atmospheric potential. The impossible crime mystery is everything. And, much as I like sealed room mysteries, this sealed elevator mystery has to rank as a missed opportunity. It’s not really surprising that Rhode and Carr never wrote a joint novel again.