Devil (2010)

On a typical workday in Philadelphia, five people find themselves trapped on an elevator. As the security and maintenance crew -- and eventually the police -- try to get them out, it begins to come out that the devil is among them, playing them against one another and destroying them, one by one. Each of these five people has a secret that may have brought them together, but even the police detective, a recovering alcoholic with a dark past, may have a specific reason for being there. Can the humans solve the mystery before the devil destroys everyone?

Devil is a low-budget to be sure, but it's streamlined and economic. For a small package, it comes up with some very effective ideas and scares and conjures up some terrific atmospheric moments, ranging from the odd, upside-down opening credits to a scene of a maintenance man chasing his cap across a wind-blown rooftop. It may try to be a little too smarty-pants toward the final third, but it's easy enough to be pulled under its spell by that point. There's far less at stake here than in Shyamalan's last few letdowns, and it mostly works.