When will they ever listen to me people? I’m yelling at the TV while watching this film ‘Devil’s Highway’, mainly because I like to talk to my TV set because it doesn’t talk back, at least not yet, and I’m telling these fools ‘DON’T TAKE THE SHORTCUT’ as they travel to Las Vegas. Or away from Las Vegas. I can’t remember. Now mind you the shortcut is called ‘The Devil’s Highway’ so the shortcut itself is telling these idiots not to take the shortcut because you know damn well that there are no gas stations on The Devil’s Highway, you know that cell phones probably don’t work on The Devil’s Highway, and you know if there’s anywhere on The Devil’s Highway to look for help, it’s probably some rundown possessed shack filled with eeeeevil. Damn if I’m not right again. I should also mention that my highlight in watching ‘Devil’s Highway’ was me yelling at the TV for those eight or nine seconds as this one of the slower, more lackluster, non thrill possessing ‘horror’ movies I’ve seen in some time.

So a group of diverse people are on a Greyhound heading to somewhere when just as the doors were about to close, a rather freaky looking dude (Shane Brolly) jumps on. Everybody knows something’s wrong with this dude but the woman who’s dying of the brain tumor (Natalie Alexander) REALLY knows something’s wrong with the guy because brain tumors never lie. Turns out this dude is Satan, like for real. The first time we saw the freaky dude was in the films opening scene, before Satan got all up in him, being chased by the cops until he swerves his ride to avoid some freaky looking chick. He stops the car and converses with this chick – where the cops went I really don’t know – and the next thing you he’s all Satanized.

Anyway it’s off we go with Satan straight up harassing people, particularly the cute runaway girl (Kacia Brandy). Satan however often gets tired of these bodies he occupies and at each rest stop he, or she as the case may be, inhabits a new bus passenger with the body he had been occupying being dead I guess, since they never

really show us what happens to the discarded bodies. After Satan does his little switcheroo he then corners other members of the bus to let them know that he knows all the really naughty stuff they’ve done in their lives. Kind of like Santa Claus likes to do, and we all know what happens when you slightly rearrange the letters in ‘Santa’.

So the passengers are dropping with each rest stop, which doesn’t really seem to bother anybody all that much, and now our Bus Driver (Robert Miano) decides he’s behind schedule and it’s time for the freaking short cut. Before then the Scared Black Dude reads some article he found vividly describing what happened back in the day on The Devil’s Highway but does that stop my man from taking the ‘shortcut’? Of course it doesn’t. A punctured gas tank, no cell phone reception, death, mayhem and confusion are soon to follow.

Directed by one Fabien Pruvot the concept of ‘Devil’s Highway’ is actually quite palatable with people from various walks of life trapped on a bus with Satan, but the concept is cut off by the fact that we already know who Satan is almost at all times. The only time where it was a mystery who Satan might be was when our hapless passengers had to hang out in the evil shack of a possessed town, and it was in this brief moment that ‘Devil’s Highway’ had a real pulse and was brimming with some legitimate electricity. Unfortunately this was only for a little while and this also took place near the end of the movie. Thus the majority of the film consisted of observing a bunch of people riding a bus through a desert with some real obnoxious cat on board. Since we already knew who the bad seed was there was no tension being generated, and when they got off at the rest stops an opportunity was missed in keeping Satan’s identity a secret which might have added a little mystery to our rather mundane proceedings, but alas we knew already who Satan was going to be, and if we were even the slightest bit unsure, the Brain Tumor lady would make sure that we knew.

As we pointed out earlier the movie is slow and gets really tedious at times, there’s the bare minimum of action, there’s no sex or gratuitous nudity to distract us and again we are mostly stuck watching people, most of whom we don’t like anyway, interact on a bus.

On the positive side the movie did come off as a professional production with a nice clean look to it and the actors did okay with what little they were asked to do, but none of this keeps ‘Devil’s Highway’ from being a Horror / Thriller that offers almost no horror and certainly delivers very few thrills.