Elevator

Nine diverse people get stranded in an elevator of a corporate building after the head honcho's spoiled daughter hits the emergency button. Soon a person with a makeshift bomb makes his or her devious intentions known.

This movie, while filled with movie clichés, still manages to be somewhat tense and pretty watchable due to fairly competent acting from almost everyone involved (I personally didn't care for either the kid nor Joey Slotnick, the latter I can't recall anything good he's been in). It's not the best movie about people stuck in elevators but it's not the worst either.

This film begins in New York with a lavish party being held in the penthouse of a high-rise building on Wall Street. To that effect, the CEO of the corporation holding the event, by the name of "Henry Barton" (John Getz), joins several other people in the elevator to take them to the event. In the elevator with him is his young granddaughter, "Madeline Barton" (played by both Rachel Pace and Amanda Pace), along with several employees who work for Henry Barton. Also included in this group is a stand-up comedian by the name of "George Axelrod" (Joey Slotnick), who is extremely claustrophobic and lets everybody know how he feels about the elevator being too crowded. Being quite mischievous, Madeline decides to play a prank on him by pressing the emergency stop button near the 49th floor. What she doesn't realize, however, is that the gears on the elevator are in need of repair, and as a result, there is no immediate way to get out of their current dilemma. Even worse is the fact that one of the other people in this group has brought a bomb into this elevator, which is set to detonate within two hours, and this may not be enough time for maintenance to correct the situation. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this turned out to be a fairly entertaining movie which managed to keep my attention pretty much from start to finish. Admittedly, the film could have also used a bit more suspense here and there, but even so, it was good enough for the time spent, and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

I liked the movie Devil (2010) and also liked the movie Blackout (IV) (2008)

All three of these have on thing in common, is that most of movie takes center stage in the Elevator and they all very different in a way

This movie was a lot better then I thought it would, it had some decent cast, some were not likable.

I thought the movie flowed really well from to start to end,even it just one location.

There one really bloody moment in this movie, which wasn't to much.

i Thought the movie was Entertaining

ELEVATOR has a decent set-up: a group of characters are trapped in a stuck lift, and one of them holds a secret that's going to put them into a dangerous situation. It's a clear copy of the recent Shyamalan-produced horror movie DEVIL, except this one's non-supernatural. The box proclaims that it's the film that DEVIL could have been, but that's a downright lie.

Because ELEVATOR is a disappointment. Sure, the set-up is fine and the character mix is okay. You can't really fault the acting, either, even if most of the cast are unrecognisable aside from THE FLY's John Getz playing a typically jerkish character. Everyone puts in solid, if unspectacular performances, and I did like Joey Slotnick as the loud-mouthed comedian despite his character's brash, irritating nature.

The problem with this is the script. It's fair to say that nothing really happens in ELEVATOR, and there's certainly nothing here to make this unmissable viewing. I can think of two good, suspenseful sequences in the entire movie, and the rest of it is just endless build-up leading to a pay-off that never arrives. I actually enjoyed the first half more than the second, purely because of the expectation value. The ending is particularly disappointing and lightweight.

This should have been much better than it is, because Stig Svendsen does a good job of shooting within the claustrophobic confines of his small-scale set and there are all the right ingredients; it's just that they don't amount to much in the end. And the incredibly irritating girl in it should have been killed; it was criminal that she never got punished for her daft actions.

I got to see this one on it's world premiere yesterday, at the Tromso International Film Festival. Not knowing what I could expect from this hardly known Norwegian director, Stig Svendsen, I was still hoping to see a nerve wrecking thriller about modern day terrorism. The film started out as expected, but it seemed very unoriginal at first. The main characters seemed too familiar and too smooth. Additionally I found a couple of the actors weren't any good. But as the film got going, it turned out this wasn't at all a dead serious thriller. A couple of really watchable characters showed up, and the scripted turned humorous, in a quite successful way.

The film goes on as a rare mix of comedy and thriller, that actually works brilliantly. The filmmakers have successfully combined a serious situation with humor, and the result is one crazy elevator ride. It owes a lot to traditional action comedy films, but at the same time it really is something of it's own. It's rare to see such entertaining films and especially films about such a relevant topic.