Dick Maas

  • Down aka The Shaft (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (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.

  • De Lift [The Lift] (1983)

    De Lift [The Lift] (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) I wasn’t expecting much from De Lift, and while it’s an exaggeration to say that I was pleasantly surprised, the result is more interesting than I expected from a “killer elevator” horror film. Hailing from the Netherlands, this film takes on the cold tones of an Amsterdam mixed-used building having elevator troubles — fatal elevator troubles, as many sequences painstakingly show: As people are suffocated, fall to their death, get stuck in doors then decapitated, or simply burn for no explainable reason, it becomes clear to our repairman protagonist that something’s not right with the building’s elevators. Working with a journalist, he eventually discovers the reason behind the evil elevators, and surprisingly, it’s one that sends the film in unusually contemporary science-fiction territory: The elevator’s electronics rely on brand-new organic components that (to get back to more familiar and dumber territory) went crazy and turned evil. Still, the time spent in the techno-thriller genre is a bit unusual for a horror film that could have gone for demonic possession (such as 2010’s Devil), a building built upon a graveyard or other explanations from the usual playbook. I’m not going to pretend that the entire film is credible — In fact, it gets progressively crazier (such as with an ill-fitting domestic arc that has the wife screaming divorce at the most innocuous event) and crazier (ending with a CEO personally shooting a gun at the bio-computer, and the elevator taking revenge by somehow spitting out a cable to hang its killer) as it goes on. The early-1980s period feel is now an advantage, and so is the matter-of-fact European setting. Writer-director Dick Maas isn’t strong either in writing or visual presentation (well, save for featuring bright red elevator doors in the middle of a blue-tinged film.), but De Lift isn’t as silly as one could imagine from the obvious “killer elevator” pitch.