Elevator Game

Elevator Game is a film whose story is based on an internet creepypasta legend that originated in Japan and South Korea.

The legend states that if you use an elevator to travel to a series of floors, in a specific order...upon reaching the fifth floor...a mysterious woman will enter.

You can neither look at, nor speak to this woman...less she pull you into her realm.

After reaching the fifth floor...you hit the button for the first floor...and if you go up...towards the tenth floor...upon reaching said floor...you open a portal to her realm.

One much like our own, though where there is no electricity...and a red cross can be seen in the sky.

Hence it being called "The Red World" in the film.

To get back...you must go to the same elevator, and repeat the process...though...upon heading toward the tenth floor, you must interrupt the process by hitting a button for a floor between the one you are on, and the tenth floor.

This should, in theory, return you to your own dimension.

If the process is interrupted by someone else entering the elevator, prior to reaching the tenth floor...you must immediately return to the first floor...and not look back.

Such are the rules of The Elevator Game.

For the most part, the film remains true to these rules.

However they take some artistic liberties of their own.

By having the "Fifth Floor Woman" rip you apart if you break the rules, for example.

Going into this, I fully expected it to be stupid.

And it is.

But I actually kind of enjoyed it.

It's definitely the type of horror that is tailored towards adolescents, and the youtube generation.

I think, ideally, it would have worked better as a short film.

But, for what it is...it actually kind of works.

Which is substantially more than I expected from it.

So colour me pleasantly surprised.

4 out of 10.

It is becoming a trend, the self aware horror. Ever since the original Scream, can't believe I have to say "original Scream" but ok, counting down to movies like Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Final Girls, Fear Street, Talk to me, and so on, movie characters don't act like movie characters anymore.

If they are in a zombie movie, they know what zombies are, and the same happen here: characters that quickly accept their situation and try to find a way out. How do they do it? Well exactly like you would see in a horror film, by going back to the beginning, seeing how it all started and finding the way to end it.

Elevator Game is somewhat fun and sort of smart but it doesn't reach the heights of an original masterpiece. Characters are overall bland and boring, the plot is easy to predict and sadly...they went with a lot of bone cracking. I think this technique is overused and it just doesn't impress anymore. Should have done something different with our main killer.

It's no Grudge, no The Ring, the villain has very little screen time and whenever it does appear, its presence has no impact.

For a one time view, I think you should definitely try it. It's out there with Countdown (2019), Come play (2020) or Megan (2022). Close to something great, but not quite there.

Cheers!

This is not terrible by any means. I can imagine that with someone like Sam Raimi at the helm this might have become a decent, scary little horror film. However what we have is TikTok driven fan fiction.

There are one or two jump scares here and there but none of it makes any sense.

The major problem is the acting or rather the over acting, the over emoting, the actors and their total lack of talent. Everyone is absolutely awful. So bad that we end up rooting for the elevator demon type thingy.

There may be another one, who can say. It was obviously filmed on a small budget however it didn't crack a million at the box office.

The Elevator Game is a simple premise of a film: horror video blog just out of high schoolers need a quick and spooky idea for their channel to keep a sponsor. Thus, the decide on the Elevator Game that evokes the Fifth Floor Woman and her Red World.

The simple premise does lower the overall film as there isn't much more to the plot than this. (There is one minor twist about halfway through that is ultimately worthless for any deviation from the plotting.) Characters aren't bad for 2 dimensional, and acting is decent inside of these characters.

There is enough creepiness in the moments that do occur that I kind of liked this film. Ending is tired retread of other films, and most likely a sad attempt of the producers to allow for a sequel. Really? We need a sequel for a simple film?

Not saying it's great by far, but I gave a 6 as it did keep me watching without any yawns or sassy back talk to the film.

Again with this tacky social media challenge/investigator horror movie formula. Shudder wiffed on this one. The setup in the first few minutes was probably the best part, and that's not saying much. The next 30-45 minutes of a bunch of social media hucksters banter back and forth is quite dull. I was not interested in anything they had to say, and no interest watching them stumble through their pitiful plight on their devices. Sometime after that we get a frightening scene, more pointless dialogue, and then we get to watch someone sift through web pages for a while.. and then I think I dozed off. I gave it a star for some ok-but-sparse tense scenes, but I couldnt come up with anything else worth mentioning. Bottom of the barrel stuff for Shudder flicks.