MY CALL: A great cast, a nonsensical plot, and intelligent homicidal elevators make for a just serviceable enough remake of a just rare enough subgenre (killer machines) movie to be maybe just worth watching. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Shaft: The obvious choice is Devil (2010), which is fantastic. The Platform (2019) is a different take on “elevator horror,” but it would still make a decent themed double-feature. There’s also The Lift (1983; aka, De Lift), Thang Máy (2020) from Vietnam, and Elevator Game (2023).
Writer and director Dick Maas returns nearly two decades later to deliver this remake of The Lift (1983; aka, De Lift). The plot points and highlights are all the same, only now the writing and acting are a bit better, the movie is somewhat expanded, and the budget and cast are much better. Like Sam Raimi had Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, so does Maas have The Lift (1983) and The Shaft (2001).
The Millennium Building in New York has 102 floors and 73 elevators, which start having some mechanical problems. But once a security guard is decapitated by an elevator, elevator-phobic Lt. McBain (Dan Hedaya; Endangered Species, The Hunger, Alien: Resurrection) is on the investigation. After more gruesome accidents accumulate, elevator repairman Mark (James Marshall; Gladiator, Twin Peaks) teams up with investigative reporter Jennifer (Naomi Watts; The Ring 1-2, Goodnight Mommy, Children of the Corn IV) to get to the bottom of these strange deaths.
Some of the murderous elevator shenanigans reach wacktastic levels of CGI mayhem. None of these scenes are particularly good… but if you walked into this in the mood for a fun bad movie then you’ll enjoy a good laugh. Like the 1983 original, the mystery leads to biological computer chips that reproduce and take on a mind of their own in the form of a goopy fuse box.
The finale leads us into a third act that is more like an action movie than a horror movie. There’s bazookas, explosions, and intelligent elevator systems that somehow have telekinetic control over elevator cables. Kinda’ fun… really dumb. Adding to the fun is how you’ll recognize so many actors from the cameos, which include Edward Herrmann (The Lost Boys, The Town that Dreaded Sundown), Michael Ironside (Children of the Corn VII, The Vagrant, Prom Night II, Still/Born, Extraterrestrial, Scanners, Turbo Kid) and Ron Perlman (The Last Winter, Pacific Rim, Hellboy 1-2, Cronos).
The writing is very bad. Though, still not as bad as in The Lift (1983). And to be totally fair, while still a bad movie, it’s a much better bad movie than the original. I enjoyed both of them enough not to regret these viewings.
