Devil (2010): Your Words Mean Nothing

Why forgiveness has fallen out of favor

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A young man suspects his wife of cheating and confronts her with his suspicions. The wife, cornered, admits to it, explaining through tears why she felt driven to such misbehavior.

The husband, a Christian who loves his wife, offers to work through this together. The wife is grateful and says she is sorry for hurting him.

But…

Her behavior doesn’t change. She doesn’t want to give her husband access to her phone or social media accounts, even though those were the venues of her affair.

“I said I was sorry. I didn’t even have to come clean. You should trust me.” When the husband says that trust is earned, the wife brings out the trump card:

“It’s not very Christian of you not to forgive me when I asked for it.”

This is a heavily simplified conversation, but it happens every day in a variety of contexts. Party A egregiously wrongs Party B. Party A says sorry. Party B is allowed no further discussion of the wrongdoing. After all, “God knows my heart.”

There is much discourse these days about the life-coachification of the Christian church, with most of the criticism going toward evangelical congregations. They focus on feelings, fellowship (consensus), and inclusion, rather than enforcing the standards set forth by Jesus and later, Peter.

Everybody wants to talk about forgiveness and redemption. But they skip over contrition and repentance. Those feel icky to talk about. “Stop shaming me!” the mega-church attendees insist. “You’re ruining the vibe, man.”

Christian movies like to feature forgiveness and repentance as major themes but… those movies don’t quite resonate. Even with believers. The cringe is too strong.

Surprise of all surprises, Hollywood actually did it justice. In 2010, Devil was hardly a box-office smash, but it was one of the better religious horror movies of the time, largely because it showed us an aspect of Christianity that often gets glossed over these days.

Yes, you can be forgiven no matter how badly you have sinned, but there is a price of admission. One that goes way beyond saying you’re sorry.

A Gallery of Rogues

In a high-rise office building, five people get into an elevator. Three men and two women. Only one gets out—even though his sins were arguably the worst.

First, there’s Vince.

Obviously, he’s a smarmy asshole. We know he's a creep just by looking at him. If he looks familiar, this is the actor who ate the whole bag of mushrooms in the opening scene of Super Troopers. He behaves like a creep from the get-go and though we don’t learn until later he started a ponzi scheme, we know immediately he’s scum.

Then, there is “the old woman.”

She is never named, but is introduced as your classic Karen. Nagging, unpleasant, expecting of others to cater to her while being a burden to those around her. We find out later through the police characters that this woman makes a habit of snatching things from other women’s purses when they’re not looking.

Ben is a security guard, a temp actually.

This is his first day working in the building. The temp agency who hired him obviously didn’t bother with a background check, because Ben has a record of assault. He's a violent guy, one who is familiar with the stages of rigor mortis, so maybe there are more crimes he wasn’t caught for.

Sarah is young, entitled, and pretty.

Vince, being a ponzi guy, immediately clocks her as being filthy rich. Quiet luxury rich. How did she come by all that money? Years of blackmailing rich men, only to land a whale of a husband—the heir to a billion-dollar empire. We can assume there was no prenup, because she is in that elevator on the way to see a divorce attorney, one who specializes in forensic accounting.

Tony is a working class guy who doesn’t fit in with the rest of the group.

An former Marine and Afghanistan war vet, Tony is best prepared to tackle the strange situation unfolding in the elevator. He also feels he has something to prove. Five years ago, he drove drunk and killed a woman and her child. Calling no one, Tony scribbled out “I’m sorry” on the back of a car wash coupon and left it on the mangled car he crashed into. And then left the scene.

And watching all of them like some kind of guardian angel is Detective Bowden.

Called to the scene to investigate a jumper suicide in that building, Bowden is there to observe through cameras the horror that seems to have no explanation. Newly sober, Bowden struggles with rage. You see, his wife and child were killed by a drunk driver five years ago.

Ramirez: [The Devil] never does this in secret. There's a reason we're the audience.

The Devil Gets His Due

Of all the people in the elevator, Vince is the only one who can’t pull off the act of being a decent human being. He doesn’t have the physiognomy for it. So it makes sense he is the first to die. After the elevator jolts to a stop and any attempt to get it moving again fails, the lights start to flicker and the occupants get real antsy.

Finally, the flights flicker off. In the pitch black, the mirror glued to the wall is smashed, and when the lights come back up, a piece of glass has been shoved into Vince’s neck. He bleeds out in record time. Now there are four people left, and no one knows which is the killer.

The old woman is the second to die. The lights turn off again, and when they come back on, our elderly harridan is hanging from the rafters. Now there are three people left.

With the old woman being strung up like that, it excludes Sarah as the guilty party. She doesn’t have the strength.

That leaves Ben and Tony to stare each other down, Ben positioning himself as Sarah’s protector—something she orchestrated from the start. Shortly after the elevator stopped, Sarah accused Vince of groping her, clinging to Ben and begging him “Don’t let him touch me.”

After Vince is killed, Tony uses his mechanics skills to take off a light panel with the intention of climbing up to the next access panel in the shaft.

What does Sarah do? She screams: “He’s escaping! He wants to get away with it!”

This drives Ben to grab hold of Tony and drag him back in the elevator, threatening to kill him if he tries to leave.

No one even suspected Tony of being the one to stab Vince. Why would they? Was Sarah trying to stop him from getting help? Or maybe she just couldn’t help herself. This is her pattern.

Tony sees her for what she is.

Don't you see what she's doing? Chick's a twist… that's what we used to call people like her in the Marines.

Suddenly out of the blue, everybody would start fighting with each other. Tempers would flare, people would start getting hurt.

But then we realized it's just the new guy telling everybody what other people said, stirring shit up where there wasn't any.

Until one night when we beat the living shit out of that twist.

And then, just like that, everything would go back to normal.

I want you to know that I know

By now, Detective Bowden has ordered all three of them to keep their hands on the wall, facing away from each other in a futile attempt to keep control until the fire department can cut through concrete to get to them.

But the lights go out again, and when they come up, Ben is on the floor, his neck twisted all the way around.

Tony and Sarah have a Mexican standoff, each holding out a piece of broken mirror at the other, terrified. Tony has to know that Sarah is not strong enough to have twisted a human head around like that. But by this point, everyone knows they’re dealing with something more than human.

Looking Your Sin in the Face

Bowden: According to your story, how would I save them?

Ramirez: There's no easy answer. You're never gonna get these people to see themselves as they really are. 'cause it's the lies that we tell ourselves, they introduce us to him.

Tony knows Sarah is a bad person. He doesn’t know about the blackmail or the impending divorce rape of the hapless rich husband. He only knows that Sarah is nasty and likes to cause chaos wherever she goes.

Even still, when the lights go out again, and they come on to reveal Sarah’s throat has been cut, he rushes immediately to help.

But it’s too late. For her, and for him.

The old woman, the corpse with the broken neck, stands up, revealing herself as the devil.

Tony looks up at her in horror, but doesn’t recoil. He knows what she's there for. Instead of begging for his life, he begs for Sarah’s. “Take me instead. I deserve this.”

This offer disgusts the devil, rather than moves him. “You think you’re good? You think you should be forgiven?”

No, he doesn’t. And he doesn’t plead for Sarah because he thinks she deserves it either. She doesn’t. Sarah isn’t sorry for anything. But he knows between the two of them, he deserves damnation more. A debt must be paid, and he is willing to pay it.

But it’s not Tony’s contrition, his sorrow, or even his willingness to die for Sarah, that moves the devil, that takes away his power to drag Tony to hell.

It’s when Tony grabs the police radio and broadcasts to everyone in the building, including police: “I killed a mother and her son on Bethlehem Pike five years ago. Uh... It was a hit-and-run and I was never caught. I'm so sorry.”

And he is. He is sorry. He will atone. He will make recompense. He will go forth and sin no more.

That is what denies the devil his claim on a soul.

“Damn. I really wanted you.”

The lights come back on, and everything starts working again. The elevator smoothly makes its way to the ground floor, where the fire crew is there to meet it. The doors open to reveal Tony alive, sitting in the elevator with three bloody corpses. But the old woman is gone.

Repentance is the Price of Salvation

What would you do if you found out you’d just spent the whole day trying to save the life of the man who killed your family? The man who took everything from you? Who drove you to drink and, one dark night, hold a gun to your head?

Bowden is there to arrest Tony for the crime he has just confessed to, and tells his partner he will take him to the station. In the car, we see him battling the rage.

After driving silently, Bowden tells Tony who he is.

“That was my family on Bethlehem Pike. That was my son. I've been waiting for this moment for five years. All the things I'd say to you and what I'd do.”

Tony listens, the same mournful acceptance on his face as in the elevator.

“The thing is, I forgive you."

And we believe him. Because there is no lip service being paid in that car, no virtue signaling for cameras. No transactional “grace” being given for the sake of one’s own ego.

There is only a man grievously wronged witnessing the real, tactile repentance of the one who wronged him. And feeling the weight of rage being lifted from shoulders.

Catholics recite the Act of Contrition when we go to confession. Contrition being the affliction of the soul or a heartfelt sadness at our own wrongdoing.

But that’s not enough.

Repentance is one step further. It’s changing course, changing your mindset, changing your soul to never even be capable of such evil again.

The feelings without the action are meaningless.

People love to ask, “Are Christians REQUIRED to forgive people?” You’re asking the wrong question.

The real question is, in the face of true repentance, is any Christian capable of not forgiving? Probably not.

Because we all know what it looks like. We feel it down to our bones when we witness the resolution of a sinner to be different, to be better, and do whatever is needed to atone for what they’ve done.

And those who think their own guilty conscience is enough, who think they can skip out on the atonement part of the equation… you’re not fooling anyone with your self-help, new-age platitudes.

Least of all God.

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