Shame the Devil (2013)

Must See Movie...

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

A film that thinks it would be a good idea to copy Saw, then try to copy s7ven (but work through the 10 commandments instead!)Very predictable, very repetitive and absolutely nothing new.From the opening rip off scene to the closing "twist" this film fails to present the viewer with any innovation.I am not sure how I made it to the end. I suppose I wanted to see how they could fit the deaths in associated with the ten commandments. They didn't even manage that!This film would be good if you were playing cliché bingo. You would have a full house after 30 minutes. Lead cop taken off the case and continues to investigate it ... You know the score.Avoid.

I usually enjoy British films, they usually are interesting, clever, witty and well written, 'shame the devil' has none of these attributes. It is classed as horror, sorry I have experienced more horror opening the cupboard and discovering we are getting low on coffee, at one point my wife asked in all sincerity "is it meant to be a comedy?" With most films you have to suspend a bit of logic but with this you need a lobotomy to skip the massive holes in the plot. Why after 7 years does she decide to get back with the most boring man in the world. Who is Victor? Who killed the taxi driver? she was with James and Victor was in London. A British policeman travels across to New York, obtains an illegal gun, breaks in to someone's house, shoots him dead and the New York police do not take him into custody? Lie detectors do not operate in this manner. etc The term wooden is over used but Simon Phillips makes Keanu Reeves look like Orson Welles, he must have been taking direction and being told "look bored senseless in every scene" the dialogue is weird everyone seems to go from 1 to 10 and missing the steps in between. Then we have the continuous flash backs for no apparent reason, then the overused camera flashgun effect. At the end of the film if he had not jumped from the wall there would have been a queue of viewers to help him bring an end to this abysmal offering.

This is the first time I have been driven to write a review for IMDb but have done it purely as a public service to warn people off wasting 90 minutes of their lives on this bilge.From the opening scene one imagines a second rate, British version of Saw. Sadly it is not even 3rd or 4th rate. Where as Saw has real menace, even if the franchise grew more tired as it wore on, this lack believability, tension, emotional depth and any sense of a real narrative to drive it forward.None of the actors is bad mind you, they have simply been given dialogue that is at best clunky and at worse downright nonsensical.Avoid.

Well – I was really disappointed by this film, and I didn't have that many expectations.I am not sure where to start – seriously. From the outset it just didn't seem 'right' and progressively became more 'not right'.From the outset the dialogue doesn't seem to fit together properly – let alone flow naturally as the story progresses. The same with character interactions – they just don't make sense at all. It is like the bits that explain the characters interaction is missing and they are straight into heavy emotional or dramatic dialogue for no obvious reason – very odd.It could be partly the acting and partly the direction (as well as the awful writing) which doesn't make the characters believable at all. It is a bit like watching a very bad Latin American soap (if you have seen one you will know what I mean).Then there are the factual inaccuracies. Whoever wrote this did not do their research well – if they did any at all that is. Some things are just plain ridiculous – like the lie detector machine and the 'psychological profiler' speaking absolute (bleep) about nearly everything to do with psychology. There are so many unbelievable and plain stupid scenarios in this film that it is best to watch it for yourself – if you have nothing better to do such as laundry, or there isn't much interesting on the shopping channels.The cinematography and lighting are OK though – mostly.This could have potentially been a decent film if someone had taken time to write decent dialogue and made sure the story flowed naturally - and got their facts right – and the actors were better and not a mixture of wooden overly dramatic pensiveness.The ending was rubbish too.