“Devil’’ throws down this claustrophobia-inducing gauntlet. Three-quarters of this thriller takes place in an elevator car stuck between the 21st and 22d floors of a skyscraper.

Trapped inside are five shady souls, a neat racial and socioeconomic cross-section of America, but all with some sinful behavior in their pasts: a mechanic and war vet played by Logan Marshall-Green (“Brooklyn’s Finest’’); Geoffrey Arend of “(500) Days of Summer’’ as a smarmy salesman; hulking security guard Bokeem Woodbine (“The Last Sentinel’’); Bojana Novakovic (“Drag Me to Hell’’) as an innocent-seeming young woman; and a (supposedly) harmless old lady, played by Jenny O’Hara (“Mystic River’’).

From the opening sequence — upside-down aerial shots of the Philadelphia skyline — you know bad things will happen. Plus, before the elevator contrivance, we meet haunted Detective Bowden (Chris Messina of “Julie & Julia’’), whose family recently died in a hit-and-run accident. A friend tells Bowden, “Your ability to forgive is going to determine the course of your life more than anything else.’’ Naturally, we’re going to see how that will play out.

Director John Erick Dowdle (“Quarantine’’) gives us some breathing room away from the elevator shaft by weaving in the fate of Bowden,  as well as showing ample scenes of security guards, repairmen and rescue crews trying to save the victims before they kill each other. Which they begin to do.

But, as the title gives away, the plot is less “whodunit’’ and more “the devil made whodunit.’’  One security guard conveniently happens to be an amateur demonology expert, and tries to convince our skeptical detective that the devil is in the details.   The stuck elevator smacks of purgatory. (Get it? --- it's stuck between up and down -- heaven and hell -- in a dark shaft that's a kind of express train to heck.). That car wreck? It occurred on the Bethlehem Pike. With these not-so-subtle biblical nods, you know you’re about to enter the morally pure universe of M. Night Shyamalan, where naughty people get punished.

In teen slasher horror flicks, the ones who engage in premarital sex always get the knife. The pure of heart is saved, and sometimes saves the day. In this sense, filmmakers and novelists are like lesser deities. It's a seductive fantasy, to be the world-builder who gets to decide the fates of characters like a god. 

“Devil’’ may be directed by Dowdle, but the story is all Shyamalan (“The Sixth Sense,” “Signs,” “The Village”), the auteur of the “what the . . .?’’ ending. The precocious, not-so-young anymore writer-director's last outing, the adventure-fantasy “The Last Airbender,” was a departure. Perhaps Night may not want to take direct credit for his usual final reel trickery: “Devil” is the first installment of a projected series of suspense movies, “The Night Chronicles,” built on concepts by Night but executed by newbie directors like Dowdle.

Despite the gimmick’s potential hazard — the audience becoming squirrelly — the devilry largely works. Performances are solid, the script nimble, and the plot managed to keep at least this reviewer guessing.

Here’s the predictable part: We all learn a lesson about forgiveness. And we are told that if the devil exists there must also be a God. So take that, Stephen Hawking.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, now in paperback. Contact him through his website http://www.ethangilsdorf.com.