Shyamalan's Schadenfreude

Looks like someone needs to go read their bible.

 

So, recently I was dragged to see the latest installment in the greek tragedy that is the film career of M. Night Shamalan, Devil.  I fortunately was not required to pay to see it but I was dreading it all the same, until I saw that it was a meager 80 minutes.

Fortunately it was horrible.  Call me a Negative Nancy but I do love participating in the schadenfreude surrounding Mr. M. Night these days.

If Freud were here he'd say of M. Night, "Woah man does he suck. Now excuse me while I pretend this cigar is a penis."

So what sucked about it?

- The characters were either unlikable or completely benign and I couldn't bring myself to care about a single one of them.

- The acting is weak.

- The "twist" ending I saw coming from miles away, before I even saw the movie I figured it out.  Seriously, if you've seen the trailer and have any kind of intelligence about these kind of movies you already know exactly how this ends within in the first 5 minutes.

- The theology of the story is completely screwed up for the sake of making a movie about the El Diablo.

Allow me to explain that last bullet point.

The concept of this movie, as explained by a stereotypical hispanic dude, is that Mr. Lucifer is coming to visit a few "damned" on earth to toy with them before he murders them and ships them off to the big barbeque in the basement (Original phrase there, off the cuff).  Being that I am someone who has a decent understanding of Christian Theology I have a big problem with this.

Basically all that is going on here is that the Devil has picked out a few sinners to kill and send to hell.  But the entire basis of faith in Christianity, particularly Catholicism, revolves around the idea that people can be forgiven for their sins (I'm going out on a limb and assuming that Mr. Mexicano is a Catholic).  Doesn't the Devil going in and directly killing people so he can send them to hell without giving them a chance to repent constitute a massive breaking of "rules" so to speak?

I mean, it is true that the people in the film weren't exactly waiting in line for confession but this still rings incredibly cheap to me.  Technically everybody is a sinner so he could just wait around and kill everyone in the whole world if he wants.  What's so special about these people?

"Even my "twists" are getting boring and predictable."

There ways to get around all this but I doubt any of them even occurred to Mr. Night.  I know most people wouldn't even spend to seconds thinking about this but it bothered me.  Call me high matience, but If you're going to make a movie where your shucking some B.S. religious angle you should at least know what your talk about.

A part of me wants to give this movie the overrated tag but, unfortunately, most of the rest of the viewing public also sees through Mr. Shyammy's bullshit.  So, M. Night I'm here to let you know your latest twenty-car-pile-up of a movie is rated just right.

Crazy Mystery Movie Soundtrack Language

"Aaaaayaaa preyyyyyyaaaa ummmmmmmmmm" - Enya Lyrics

You know when you're watching some big grand battle scene in a movie, like say, Lord of the Rings?  Or Gladiator?  Well sure enough, behind every awesome action sequence is that same gibberish-like choral music pushing the intensity up to eleven (Phantom Menace anyone?)

It even made an appearance in Star Craft II's soundtrack.

Add the right music and suddenly this parking lot of nerds becomes an epic battle between good and evil

What is that crazy language they're singing?  Some sort of combination of Italian, Indian, and Elvish?  If you know, DO NOT TELL ME!

This mysterious gibberish talk is far more fun to listen to without knowing what it is.  Honestly, the people who wrote it just picked the best sounding words from like four different languages with no consideration for their meaning.  Something like "pretyos, se myntos pellios" actually means "butter, jump lipstick pellios".  How much would that ruin the end of "Independence Day"?  A lot, probably.

So Underrated bizzaro nonsense language, keep on trucking, and keep sounding awesome.