for Abby and ends up in a car wreck that threatens to expose them both, he douses himself with acid to keep her secret, and his charge suddenly finds her- self all alone, save for Owen, who soon learns what she actually is and must now step up to protect her. The cast is roundly superb, and throughout the


film writer/director Matt Reeves channels Alfred- son’s original, even virtually duplicating many key scenes, including the snowy playground encounters, the hospital room inferno and the rec centre swim- ming pool massacre. In fact, he brings little of his own vision to the proceedings, and what he does add delivers mixed results. For instance, while changing the locale of the acid bath from a nearly deserted locker room to a cramped, crumpled car is suitably effec- tive, the decision to use CG to showcase Abby’s vampiric pow- ers – so she leaps around unnaturally, like a spastic monkey – seriously mars the film. Yes, despite the fact that this is a


Hammer production, it still suffers from American remake-itis, in that many of the subtler elements of the original have been punched up here, seemingly in a desire to sate North America’s need for bigger, badder, bloodier. Only this film doesn’t require any of that because it’s the story that’s the driving force here, not the effects. Let Me In is far from a remake travesty, but it


won’t be usurping the still-superior Let the Right One In as the go-to modern vampire classic either. MONICA S. KUEBLER


ELEVATOR TO HELL


DEVIL Starring Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green


and Jenny O’Hara Directed by John Erick Dowdle Written by Brian Nelson and M. Night Shyamalan Universal


Even prior to his last few box office abortions


(Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airben- der), I’d thought it was high time M. Night Shya- malan try directing someone else’s script rather than sully his otherwise competent work as a direc- tor with another poorly told, twist-laden supernatural tale. Turns out it was stepping away from the direc- tor’s chair that would improve the prolific film- maker’s critical fortunes. Capitalizing on the fear of being trapped in an el-


evator,Devil wastes little time ensnaring five strangers in a high-rise lift, only hours after a chilling bit of foreshadowing involving a suicide jumper who swan dives from the building’s upper reaches. The sequestered passengers – a claustrophobic security guard, a cranky old lady, a wisecracking salesman, a pretty young woman and a good-looking mystery man – begin to turn on each other as the flickering lights, a lack of communication with the outside


Devil: A security guard (Bokeem Woodbine) has his past come back to haunt him.


world and inter-group suspicion escalates until one of them is curiously wounded and, before long, an- other is dead. Suddenly it’s a police matter. A nearly subliminal demonic visage on the sur-


veillance footage leads one particularly religious building official – who also serves as the movie’s narrator – to suggest that not everybody in the elevator is who they seem, and that the Devil has gathered them for due penance. Police detective Bowden (Chris Messina) brushes him off as a spiritual nut but as the shadows of the passengers’ pasts start to take shape, he begins to rethink his skepticism. Reminiscent of an episode of


The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, this moral- ity tale is arguably the best work involving Shyamalan since The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. Though not perfect – there is, expectantly, a twist that ties things up just a little too neatly, and some cockamamie theory regarding proof of the Devil’s involvement – director John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine) keeps the suspense well-mea- sured, the acting sufficiently believable and under- lines the simplicity of the story’s setting with an eerie score by Fernando Velázquez (Julia’s Eyes, The Orphanage). If the movie’s message is accurate – that everybody eventually gets their comeuppance – then maybe this decent offering is our reward for sitting through the last few Shyamalan indiscretions. TREVOR TUMINSKI


ALICE IN ZOMBIELAND


RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE Starring Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter and Wentworth Miller


Written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson Sony


Like a rotting zombie in search of fresh brains, the


fourth installment of the Resident Evil franchise lurches into theatres, and this time it’s in 3-D.


Picking up where the previous film left off, After-


life opens with a bang as Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her army of clones attack the Umbrella Corporation headquarters in Tokyo. Though it’s extremely remi- niscent of the pulse-pounding lobby scene in The Matrix (com- plete with bullet-time slo-mo ef- fects), once the explosions and blood spurting have subsided, it trails off into a meandering, boring narrative about Alice searching for Arcadia, the infection-free sanctu- ary hinted at in the last film, RE: Extinction. The action doesn’t pick back up again until the halfway mark, when Alice accidentally stumbles onto a group of survivors holed up in a maximum-security prison surrounded by hordes of hungry gut-munchers. Fans of the video games might


enjoy seeing familiar characters Chris and Claire Redfield battle Umbrella head honcho Albert Wesker, but the real star of the show is a frightening new fiend from the RE:5 video game known as The Exe- cutioner – a hulking zombie boss armed with a gi- gantic, deadly axe festooned with grappling hooks, chains and sharpened spikes. Paul W.S. Anderson,


who helmed the original film adaptation in 2002, assumes directorial du- ties again, this time uti- lizing the 3-D camera system that James Cameron developed for Avatar. Translation: This is not a film that had the 3-D effects added as an afterthought (like the Clash of the Titans remake). As a result, explosions, bullets and throwing stars seem to leap right out at your face. There are times, however, when you'll completely forget that the film is in 3-D, as a lot of the action is set in the dark,


39RM


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