Down aka The Shaft (2001)

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) I originally planned to begin this review with a remark on how many “killer elevator” movies there were in between Der Lift, Devil, Blackout, (a few more I’ve only heard about) and now Down. But then I learned that Down was a remake of the original Dutch film Der Lift by the same writer-director Dick Maas, and then there was something more interesting to say in comparing the remake with its inspiration. It’s not just about the Americanization of a very European film – there’s a world of difference between a science-fictional premise made in 1983 versus a horrific rehashing in 2001. In this remake, the action has been moved to a fictional Manhattan high-rise, with different characters and some clear differences in plotting. The deaths are wilder, the cinematography far more expensive, and there are even a few known names in the cast. (Although I doubt Naomi Watts often talks about this early effort when there’s The Ring to highlight.)  Down does have a definite entertainment value to it, but it deflates the longer it goes on, as the plotting gets more ludicrous and the film goes out of its way to privilege wild moments over coherence. There’s a skateboarder death, for instance, that confounds most of the rules the film should have set for itself in playing around with a malevolent elevator, but the film makes a joke about it and simply moves on, at which point viewers can be forgiven for shrugging at a film with no intention of remaining internally coherent. There’s also a lessened impact from the revelation about the roots of the elevator malfunctions – it was an intriguing science-fictional prospect in techno-anxious 1983 (the same year as Wargames, Videodrome and Brainstorm), but it feels cheap in 2001, especially as the script is very loose about consistency. (And I’m not getting into the film’s tonal discontinuities.)  Down remains fun to watch, but it’s not particularly gripping – and it doesn’t have the same impact as its earlier, rougher but more controlled inspiration.