I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Brainless With A Splash Of Dumb

De Lift (1983) Skandinavia
Remade as Down (2001) USA

Take the stairs, take the stairs. For God's sake, take the stairs!!! That's the tagline and the most exciting part of the whole movie. Both versions, neither needing to be made at all, were done by Dutch Director Dick Maas. I couldn't find the USA version, but then again I really didn't look too hard. This was such a snorefest about nothing (oh yeah, the killer elevator theme) that it was just... awful.

In a building in Amsterdam, an elevator malfunctions because of lightning and 'almost kills' four people. The 'almost kills' tells you this is going to be incredibly dull. Wonder if this movie is what M. Night tried to copy in Devil? That was boring as hell too. Anyway, we have other victims too - a blind guy (apparently newly blind and stupid) falls down the shaft (Lift? What lift?), a night watchman's head is chopped off by closing lift doors (bloodlessly) and a janitor. In other words, we don't care care care. Enter Felix,  a technician who keeps checking the damn thing out but of course finds nothing wrong. He becomes obsessed with it and, not being the best husband or father to begin with, begins to <gasp> neglect his family. Instead of just being a befuddled worker trying to figure out this murderous puzzle, his wife assumes he's having an affair. Nice.

Wonder what's in here?

Felix finally notices a van in front of the building with 'Rising Sun' on it. They make automated systems like - ta da - the lifts. They of course are also into 'secret' technologies and have made this building a test site of some kind. When Felix, taking along a journalist for whatever reason tries to find out what's the haps, they get shut down (Get it? Shut down? Relax, that's as good as it's going to get.).

But since he took this female journalist with him, his wife finds out, thinking her to be 'the other woman'. Massive duh to massive boring. Despite her being pissed he goes with the journalist to a university teacher who gives them a lesson in microprocessors (oh this gets better and better) and the teacher claims that the more that is involved with machinery (radiation, electric fields, etc.) the more they will work by themselves. Riiight. Wow, I am so bored I'm actually surfing for more movies while this is on...

Will she die? Do we care?

Naturally, being movie-stupid the owner of the lift factory, instead of appreciating Felix's efforts to puzzle this out is furious he's meddling and suspends him. Good, movie over. Nuts, it's still going. Felix witnesses a secret conversation and learns that other 'lifts' are also killing people. Oh goody. Lawsuits all around - oh wait, this is the Netherlands. Lawyers probably aren't near as busy there.

Damn, still alive...

Felix, having lost his family (they really wanted out of this movie), has nothing left to do but keep at the lift conspiracy (Really? Getting his family back doesn't occur to him?) and solve the puzzle. MASSIVE BORING DUH. He sneaks in and the lift shows its nasty side by crushing a chair he was going to use to get in the shaft. Really? Dumb enough to climb in the shaft? He should have been dead in the first ten minutes of this movie - then we wouldn't have to watch this. So he's still in massive duh mode and goes to the top of the building to look at the computer equipment that he doesn't know anything about anyway. He goes back down and gets in the shaft anyway, and we can only hope it'll kill him this time and end the movie. Not yet. The elevator starts on its own and Felix is 'attacked' by the counterweight. Forever. Or it just seems that way. Finally, just as he is about to be crushed by the elevator as the rapid speeds have ripped the cables apart, he's pulled out by the female journalist and the movie is over - 90 minutes too late to save time and sanity of the viewer. Wow. Do we care that the maker of the thing gets his just desserts and dies at the end? No? Neither did I.