Doing these lockdown reviews has allowed me to really see the scope of cinematic achievement. I have so far watched some of my favourite films ever as well as some of the absolute worst I have ever seen and everything inbetween. 'Elevator' (2011) falls firmly within this inbetween section. With no prior notions of what this film was going to be I sat down and watched it and was decently entertained for the whole running time. It isn't the best film in the world and I don't see myself ever watching it again, but it was entertaining enough while it was on. The films narrative is very simple. The film follows 9 strangers who all get stuck in a lift together (yes I am saying lift and not elevator) while going to a cocktail party. What the people do not know is that one of them has a bomb that is rigged to go off within hours. Trapped and fearing for their lives the strangers start to learn much more about each other and aggressions and suspicions rise and secrets start to come out.
I don't want to say that this film 'ripped-off' 'Devil' (2010), mostly because I haven't seen 'Devil', but the premise is definitely inspired by it and it is a premise that is somewhat interesting. It is a premise that allows for tension to be built quite organically and for a real sense of claustrophobia to be created. Unfortunately the film doesn't really manage to do either. On a narrative level it manages to build the tension decently well, but it also throws in some unneeded plot points just to add some extra tension but they don't have any effect on the overall narrative. The most notable of these moments is when it is revealed that one of the guys who is trapped with his fiance has been cheating on her with another girl in the lift. Just to add to the situation it is revealed that he may be the father of this girls unborn child. It adds some tension to the moment but does not enhance the narrative at all. It is not brought up again and everyone seems to forget it ever even happened. The film also doesn't do a great job of making you feel claustrophobic. On a technical level the film is solid, it is shot and edited well and the sound and lighting is all good, but it's use of space isn't consistent. The space in the lift seems to get larger or smaller depending on what the filmmakers need it to be and so you never get the sense that these characters are actually enclosed in this tight space. The best you seem to get is lines of dialogue where a character will say 'we are packed in like sardines' or the like. The films writing is actually one of the better aspects of it. For a film with a concept like this you wouldn't necessarily expect it to have a moral voice but it is a film that makes a comment on racism and corporate greed. It never does this as a tacked on thing and the comments it is making flow into the narrative well.
Lets speak about the characters in the film. For the most part they are pretty much your standard cliched characters but they are not badly written cliches and they are performed pretty well. There are no performances that are brilliant but none that are so bad that they are worth writing about either. Instead I just want to focus on two characters in this film who almost became my two most hated characters in film history. The first is George Axelrod played by Joey Slotnick. George is a comedian who has been hired to perform at the cocktail party all the people were going to. He also happens to be completely obnoxious and a massive racist. He makes a racist remark almost as soon as we are introduced to him and I just wanted someone to clock him. There was one moment in the film where this character said something and I was genuinely shocked, mouth gaping and all that jazz. His character kind of made me wish that the bomb would go off to just to kill him. The second character I hated, and the character I probably hated most, was Madeline Barton, played by both Amanda Pace and Rachel Pace. Yes this character may be a ten year old girl but I don't care, she is the spawn of satan and needed to be destroyed. She is a self centred, spoilt, lying little shit and and she is the reason that these people are even in this position to begin with. She pressed the emergency stop button on the lift as a way of tormenting George Axelrod and then the lift never gets going again. Towards the end of the film she is starting to lose her mind and just keeps repeating 'it's all my fault'. I think at this point of the film we are meant to feel sorry for her, but why? It is all her fault for being such a prick and I had absolutely no sympathy for her. Is it mean to be so harsh towards a child? Yes, but this child isn't real. She is a character in a film and her character is the most evil child in cinema since Damien in 'The Omen' (1976) so fuck her.
'Elevator' is a fine film. It isn't great but it isn't bad either, it is just fine. It is a technically sound film with it being shot, edited and lit well and with good sound editing as well. The narrative keeps your interest throughout, even if it is sometimes a little cliched and throws in story beats to manufacture tension. The acting is also solid although none of it is anything to write home about. Would I recommend it? Probably not. Its not bad or anything, there is just so little here for it to be worth watching. If you have watched almost every good film ever made and are looking for something new maybe give it a go, but until then its not worth your time despite being decent.