Is Devil Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot

Five strangers and a very bad elevator

A narrator, later revealed to be a security guard named Ramirez, tells a story from his childhood: his mother said the Devil roams the Earth looking for the souls of unrepentant people. Then a man jumps from a Philadelphia skyscraper and leaves a note about the Devil's approaching presence. Soon afterward an elevator in the same building stops between floors with five people in it: a temp security guard, a mechanic who is a Marine veteran, a mattress salesman, an old woman and a young woman. While a repairman works on it, Ramirez sees a face on the camera monitor that he believes is the Devil. His partner Lustig does not buy it. When the lights come back, the young woman has been bitten on the back and the salesman's hands are bloody. Detective Bowden, who is investigating the suicide and still grieving a wife and son who were killed by a driver who fled five years earlier, is called in.

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Seven years of bad luck, delivered all at once

The lights go out again, and when they come back the mattress salesman has a broken mirror shard through his neck. That is the scene people dread most, and it comes early in the elevator stretch. The lights go out before several of the later deaths too. The elevator is now a crime scene, and the passengers start accusing each other. The guards can talk to them through a speaker but cannot hear anything back. The repairman falls to his death onto the top of the elevator. Ramirez tells the detectives it could be the Devil's Meeting, and nobody listens. Bowden and his partner check the sign-in sheet and the camera footage to identify the passengers. Ben, the temporary guard, has a record for beating a man into a coma. Vince the salesman ran a Ponzi scheme. Sarah, the young woman, steals from the rich husband she plans to leave. Jane, the old woman, was caught stealing a wallet. The mechanic never signed in and left a bag in the lobby bathroom, so he becomes the prime suspect. Then the lights flicker again and the old woman is found hanging from the ceiling by a light cable.

Everyone suspects the Marine, then each other

Ben and the mechanic fight, each convinced the other is the killer. Sarah urges Ben to kill the mechanic first, and Ben attacks, but Bowden returns to the control room and calms things down by making everyone press their hands against the wall. Lustig goes down to the basement to turn off the power. Firefighters are drilling into a wall there, and he spots a shorted wire lying in a puddle. He tries to move it and electrocutes himself. The investigators learn that Sarah's husband owns the company that provides the building's security, so they suspect he hired Ben to kill Sarah and killed the others to hide it. The next blackout leaves Ben dead with a broken neck. The mechanic and Sarah each suspect the other and arm themselves with mirror shards. Once more the lights cut out, and when they return Sarah's throat has been slit.