El ascensor

A new lift has been installed recently. A few people get stuck in it. A few days later, a blind man falls into the shaft. A guard is beheaded by the same lift. 'What we have here is a killing machine...!'

Director Dick Maas is a big fan of Steven Spielbergs films (same here, but only his earlier movies). 'De Lift', describable as another alternative for the JAWS-formula, makes clear that Dick Maas lacks a lot in comparison to the most successful Hollywood-director.

The movie has a few good scenes which are shocking, but the majority of the movie is surprisingly dull and tedious. As long as the story keeps to the elevator, it's OK. However, there are a lot of scenes about family problems and interminable discussions about elevators. Those do not build up tension, they're just very, very boring and though I am not much of a sadist, I only kept watching because I was anxiously waiting for the next person to be killed by the lift. In a very cruel way of course. One should not watch this movie for the story-line in the first place. The plot doesn't make ANY sense: how would you explain a killer lift? Anyhow, there IS some kind of explanation in the movie, but only kids under 8 years old would believe that nonsense. Under 8, for I watched this movie first when I was 7 years old and I was scared to death. Perhaps I am too old for this movie now..

It seems that Dick Maas' De Lift has become a true horror gem over the years and I even picked up that it's most wanted among cult-collectors. Well, here in the home countries (The Netherlands and Belgium) you can still easily find an old copy in videostores or even on flee-markets, so all you avid fanatics should come pay us a visit! To me, "De Lift" will always remain special because it was one of my very first encounters with the horror genre but even from a more objective viewpoint, I still think it's a very decent film with some genuine scares and an impressively grim atmosphere. The plot is far from brilliant (on the verge of ludicrous, actually) but that's widely made up by some effective shock-sequences and Maas' talent to build up slow suspense. After several people got injured by the newly installed elevator in a fancy building complex, mechanic Felix Adelaar is hired to do a detailed check up. Together with a persistent female reporter, he discovers that the production company has been experimenting with new chips that totally haven't been approved yet. There's a painful use of clichés, the dialogues are poorly written and – granted – there's a little too much talking going on. But, when the characters aren't talking nonsense, there's some pretty unsettling stuff to see! In the scariest sequence of the entire film, the fiendish elevator plays a deadly game with a young girl while the ominous music will make you move to the end of your seat. The footage filmed in the ugly shaft is really chilling and there's some excellent low-budget gore as well, with a nasty decapitation and a vile hanging as the absolute highlights. The biggest criticism I've come about this site is about the awful dubbing but, since I'm Dutch speaking, I luckily didn't suffer from that. "De Lift" was Dick Maas' first long-feature film and he also pleased the Dutch audiences with the happily deranged adventures of the Flodder family before emigrating to Hollywood where he remade his own debut. Even though Maas managed to recruit a great cast for this project (Naomi Watts, Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya...), it totally lacks the obscurity and dark cinematography of the original. Give it a look....if you can find it.

I first saw this in the late 80s on a vhs. Revisited it recently. I found the movie very surrealistic then and aft revisiting, i found it to be far ahead of its time regarding machines taking control.

After an elevator mysteriously begins to function intelligently on its own and kill people, a technician from the elevator company becomes obsessed and begins to examine the electrical system in an attempt to find the malfunctions of the elevator thereby impacting his marital life.

While the film doesn't have any gory kills except for the decapitation one. It has less body count but certain amount of tension is maintained especially when the lil girl goes closer to the lift and during the climax when Felix takes matters into his own hands.

Keep in mind that this low budget film was made for a dutch audience, and was only released internationally because of it's tremendous success in the Netherlands.

The english voices are horrible! I was able to see this version when I visited the US and found it in a small-town video store. The english voices pretty much ruined the movie.

This is no reason to give the movie a low rating however, since the movie in it's original form was an amazing breakthrough in Dutch film making. This movie's rating would be much higher if it was only rated by it's intended, dutch audience.

A superb Dutch film, with truly suspenseful moments! Nothing is quite so sinister as stretches of silence in movies, especially when they accompany Hitchcockian (which is to say here, predictable) suspense sequences. From the moment you read the synopsis, and figure that a film about bewitched microchips cannot expect to be taken seriously, you'd be forgiven for laughing at yourself for even contemplating seeing the film. However, If you're like me, and you consider that music, background noise, post-production, lipsynching, subliminal messaging goes too far in films, rendering terrible scenes risibly hyperactive, then you'll get off on the real-time sparsity of effects used here. Each delay to the denouement, agonisingly adds to the deathtoll. Is this going to change the world? Would a suspiciously murderous lift, in the real world? Tell the director, I'd like to see more.