Down

Plot synopsis:
The film takes place at the Millennium building in New York City, which has 102 floors and 73 elevators. One evening, lightning strikes the building, which causes the three main express elevators to begin acting strangely, resulting in a guard's flashlight being crushed. The next day, a group of pregnant women are held up between floors 20 and 21. The elevator overheats rapidly, causing two women to give birth and hospitalizing the rest. Reporter Jennifer Evans (Naomi Watts) is called to write a report on the incident. After an investigation by METEOR elevator company technicians Jeff (Eric Thal) and Mark Newman (James Marshall), they determine that nothing is wrong with the elevators, a large part being Jeff's inability to actually admit there is something wrong (he states throughout his scenes that the computer controlling the elevators has absolutely no defects).
A short time later, a blind man and his guide dog disappear in the building. The two guards from the beginning of the film discover the dog's corpse hanging from its collar on a shaft support. The discovering guard's head is caught between the elevator doors. He is decapitated a short while later, his partner too horrified to help him. Once again, the METEOR executives find nothing wrong with the elevators. Evans interviews Newman, who sarcastically states "Nine people out of ten make it out of an elevator alive." Evans places this in her report, causing a large controversy over his statement by his boss, Mitchell (Ron Perlman) and the police. During the same day, a roller skater is sucked into an elevator in the parking garage and shot from the 86th floor of the building to his death. The roller skater's death is explained to media as suicide.
Evans visits Newman and shows him a tape of the roller skater's death. She points out the time it normally takes for the elevator to go up 87 floors would take about 40 seconds to a minute. However, the elevator ascended the floors in less than two seconds, thus noting that there is definitely something wrong. When they try to show the tape to Jeff, he refuses to watch it and leaves abruptly. Instead, they go to Evans' office and look up a man named Gunther Steinberg (Michael Ironside), who had been experimenting with organic reproducing computer chips using dolphin brains. However, the project had gone disastrously wrong and Steinberg was fired. Later the next morning Milligan (Edward Herrmann), who remains suspicious of the elevators throughout the film, discovers Jeff's corpse in an elevator shaft. When Jennifer and Mark arrive, they are shocked to hear that the police have concocted a story that has Jeff being a terrorist and being behind the incidents and assure the public that the threat is over. Later during the day, an elevator cab flies to top floor at such a speed that the floor flies off and all the people in it are killed. This event reaches the President and is seen as an act of terrorism.
A terrorism unit is assembled at the building to get any further terrorists out of the building. Meanwhile, Jennifer and Mark discover a recent suicide could be linked to the incidents, as his extremely superstitious widow believes his soul has returned to punish others. Jennifer and Mark enter the building to discover and stop the threat once and for all. During the entry, Jennifer is taken into custody posing as a METEOR executive. During her first attempt to prove this fraud, she receives a phone call from a friend to explains that while Steinberg's time working on the "fucking chips" as they are called in the movie, has been revoked, Steinberg continued to work on the project except not with dolphin brains. Eventually, Mitchell abandons Steinberg for fear of his own reputation being ruined. Mark manages to get into the Millennium Building and discovers a large bio-chip in the form of a brain in an elevator shaft. It is assumed that this brain is alive and controlling the elevators. He attempts to destroy using a screwdriver, but this attempt fails when it sends a flaming elevator down to kill him. Mark barely escapes while the elevator kills a SWAT officer who was barely out of the elevator shaft before he was sliced in half from his waist down with the upper half of his body sliding across the floor. Marshall gets a hold of a stinger missile launcher and is about to destroy the organ when Steinberg intervenes, threatening him. Jennifer appears, having escaped custody and frees Marshall. As Mark tries to destroy the organ a third time, the police enter, giving Steinberg the opportunity to hold Jennifer hostage. Jennifer manages to escape thanks to Steinberg being unable to recognize one of his superiors. Steinberg is grabbed by the elevator shaft cables and pulled in, along with Mark. At the last second, Jennifer kicks the stinger launcher to Mark, who proceeds to destroy the organ. Steinberg's mutilated corpse falls seconds later.
Some time later, Mark and Jennifer leave a hospital where they find themselves trapped in an elevator. However, it proves to be a ruse for Mark to make a romantic overture toward Jennifer. The film then cuts out to Aerosmith's song "Love in an Elevator".

Tags: suspenseful, haunting

Review:
Down (AKA The Shaft), director Dick Maas' 2001 remake of his own 1983 Dutch horror De Lift, opens with the camera gliding gracefully over the NY skyline to eventually come to rest on 'The Millennium Building' where two night watchmen use an observation telescope to spy on big-breasted hookers at work in a neighbouring skyscraper; it's a superbly executed and wonderfully trashy opening that should make it crystal clear that Maas knows exactly what he is doing—making a highly entertaining, campy schlock/horror that shouldn't be taken seriously—and yet there are still those who seem to have missed the joke.Oh well, it's their loss, because when viewed as intended, Down proves to be a lot of fun, packed as it is with outrageously silly deaths, delightfully daft dialogue, and knowingly clichéd characters—precisely the kind of stuff I would expect to see in a horror film about a murderous 'living' elevator controlled by a malevolent state-of-the-art computer chip enhanced by living brain tissue.An excellent cast clearly have a blast in their two-dimensional stock roles, with a gorgeous pre-A-list Naomi Watts as a feisty newspaper reporter, James Marshall as a cocky elevator engineer, Ron 'Hellboy' Perlman as the shady owner of the elevator company, Dan Hedaya as a grizzled NY detective, and Michael 'Scanners' Ironside as a loathsome scientist hellbent on perfecting his pet project, whatever the cost.
Maas keeps the action moving along at a brisk pace, handling the special effects set-pieces, wry humour, and gruesome shocks with confidence, even going so far as to kill off women, children, and animals along the way.And if all that isn't enough to pique your interest, let's not forget about the eerily prophetic scene in which characters discuss the possible use of a plane in a terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre; with 9/11 just around the corner, it stands out as a genuinely chilling moment in an otherwise intentionally ridiculous and wonderfully OTT piece of nonsense.7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb..
Dutch director Dick Maas has essentially remade his own 1983 film De Lift with 2001's The Shaft (originally entitled Down), about an evil elevator system that suddenly begins killing people in a fancy-schmancy skyscraper.
Artisan has shamelessly redesigned the cover art to resemble The Ring, and to highlight the presence of star Naomi Watts, though who that kid on the cover is supposed to be is really anyone's guess, because he is certainly not in the movie I watched.In between the dull investigative drivel, Maas delivers a few fun horror moments, including a spectacular elevator door decapitation and a fun bird's-eye P.O.V. of a character's leap off the observation deck.
To Maas's credit, he has somehow managed to fill the film with a decent blend of familiar faces in supporting roles, including Edward Herrmann (the building manager), Dan Hedaya (a police lieutenant), Ron Perlman (the elevator repair company boss) and venerable bad guy Michael Ironside.There are brief moments of great fun in the murderous elevator flick, The Shaft, but too much time is spent talking and the dramatic payoff is a real eye-roller, even in B-movie horror terms.
Kicking off the scene with the sounds of Aerosmith's Love in an Elevator, an extravagant race takes place between two incredibly skilled risk takers through New York traffic and into the basement parking garage of the Millennium Building.
Before Naomi Watts became a big star from her excellent performances in excellent films like "Huckabees", "Mulholland Drive", and "21 Grams"; she was delivering excellent performances in a lot of garbage movies like "The Shaft" aka "Down".
And while her performance here does not save the movie, it does elevate (bad pun intended) it to a viewable level.The only other reason to watch this thing is to see yet another example of the film-making phenomenon that big is not only not better, but much worse.
Despite this movie being his debut, many of Maas's personal trademarks are also already in place: quick pacing, sadistic gore effects modified by edgy humor, mild satire on bourgeois preoccupations, and broadly etched supporting characters".Apparently the title "Elevator" was already taken and "Lift" was too European for the remake he was left with two very stupid titles with which the distributors have been experimenting since 2001.In the 1983 version, the elevator of an Amsterdam flat (another European term) misbehaves badly.
This time someone gave Maas a lot of money and he pumped up the production; moving it to New York, adding tons of unnecessary effects, making the elevator absurdly powerful, and geometrically increasing the size of the cast.
The new elevator is like a cross between a James Bond story and a poor 1950's science fiction film.Not surprisingly the human interest wheels fall off immediately.
If you ignore your strong impulse to bail and just keep watching you will see decent performances from Watts and the from various character actors who populate the cast.Unfortunately for Mass, he choose New York City for this 2001 movie and deviated from the original by throwing in some misdirection about terrorists being behind the elevator accidents.
The pacing is the real villain in this flick, as it drags on with useless characters and stupid tangents when elevators killing people really should have been the sole focus of the movie.
It's a real no brainer that passes the time quite nicely and while artistically his original "De Lift" is a better movie, I found this one to be more entertaining.
Writer-director Dick Maas (remaking his 1983 Dutch original, "The Lift") has a knack for framing scenes, building suspense, and keeping his camera firmly in the moment.
After an elevator in the Millennium knocks off a bunch of victims in extravagant fashion, the plot devolves into a drawn out (and ultimately unsuccessful) search for The Truth--suddenly elevator repairman James Marshall (imagine a cut-rate Brad Pitt) and fetching reporter Naomi Watts (pre-"Mulholland Drive") are standing in for Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe, turning this into "El.A. Confidential." And in the final act, Maas spins the film into the outer limits of absurdity with a Michael Bay extravaganza of stunts and explosions, throwing in some references to Osama bin Laden and terrorism (pre-9/11!) for good measure.
I like keep an open mind and give far-fetched plots a chance, I can see the potential in the idea, but this movie screws it all up.Several elevator accidents in the land mark, The Millennium Building, keeps people worried and a repairman puzzled.
What saves this movie (at least in its first hour) is its sense of (black) humor.Although it's sometimes a bit over the top (the nursery school scene is sheer bad taste:it would have taken John Waters to treat it successfully),there are plenty of funny scenes if you do not take them seriously:I particularly dig the "Bergman" lines.Unfortunately,the last thirty minutes take us back to "the invincible super hero who single-handedly fights evil ".But he was a marine,we are told.Some kind of remake of the director's "de lift" (early eighties)with a more comfortable budget.It's pretty good entertainment but you'd better choose Dick Maas's "Amsterdamned" instead..
I later saw the blind man and his dog fall to their deaths in the shaft, the other get decapitated by the elevator, the skater going in and out of the elevator with the White Light (which made me believe some supernatural force was controlling the elevator), the little girl playing with the doors and WORSE - the many people that fell through the elevator's floor.
This unknown Dutch director / writer wrote a story that tries to be funny; begins as if it were a horror, thriller or mystery movie; then, it seems to be a sci-fi but suddenly it becomes an action movie, with soldiers, policemen and lots of guns and explosions; ending with a romance between the characters of James Marshall and Naomi Watts.
Oh, by the way: Mr Dick Maas, please, for the sake of all movie-loving people think about opting for a new career.
Having said that, if they had spent the minuscule amount of money they had put into the sfx into getting a decent scriptwriter/s, then this might have been a watchable film.The dialogue is awful enough to make good actors such as Ms Watts and Ron Pearlman look like nothing more than animatronic simulcra in search of a personality, and in general, the whole thing tries to come across as a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster to no avail.I want the 90 minutes of my life back that were thoroughly wasted on this crappy excuse for a film.
New York's giant Millennium Building seems to be targeted by terrorists who are fixing it's express elevators where they end up malfunctioning and killing dozens of people.
Like in "Q" the movie keeps you interested and watching it when it explodes with the almost unimaginable violence every time anyone goes near or on the killer elevators.
The ending goes on and on with Mark and Jeniffer, Naomi Watts, a local news reporter attempting to get into the shut down Millennium Building to get to the heart of what is causing the elevators to act in such a deadly way, and put it to an end once in for all.
Terrible dialogue and plotting, and a story that...well, you just wonder why anyone put the amount of money into this movie it obviously took to produce it.Several named actors (Dan Hedeya, Ron Pearlman, Edward Herman) try manfully in their scenes to make the wordy dialogue work, as does a then little known Naomi Watts.
The style of filming is old fashioned and it looks like Mr Maas stood still for the last 2 decades.No cigar.Tim. Bad in every way, except still fun to watch.
You know what it's like when you see a movie that's pretty bad in every particular kind of way, except that it has a certain charm, an elan, a flare?
The pop corn, James Marshall as hero, Ron Perlman in an ambiguous role, a hanged dog and the love story are good pieces for a mix of comedy - action- horror who gives no memory to the viewer after its end..
And honestly, I pretty much got what I expected from Down.Essentially, this is a movie about an elevator killing people.
The horrific and entertaining methods by which the victims die are what keeps Down from getting bogged down in the inevitable investigation the main characters (Naomi Watts as a scrappy reporter and James Marshall as an elevator mechanic) make into what's going on and how to stop it.
Called in to investigate an accident, elevator repair specialists and a reporter catch on that something isn't right, and as more accidents continue to plague the building they do some investigating on the story where they piece together what went wrong and save the people trapped inside.There wasn't all that much to like about it, but what was there was enough to like.
It's not the least bit scary, but it's worth a watch simply for the fact that it's a movie about a damn elevator that kills people lol.
This also known as shaft 2001 this is a remake of the the de lift movieFor this movie to half's, I liked the fact did lost stuff very different then the original And I liked how they kept some of original scenesI liked the first half of the movie was really fun to watch, I liked opening scenes a lot better then de lift from 1983 And really when the lift kill people, I thought that scenes were lift floor open and people fall,I thought that was great scenes But they had to go ruin it by the whole terrorist thing, I think That was really bad idea to add that into this story But I did enjoy the scenes, m when the lift came to endI think this movie was a bit more fun so I going to give it 6 out 10.
It takes a "goof off but great in a crisis" (is there any other kind of goof off in movies?) elevator repair man (James Marshall) and a spunky female reporter (is there any other kind of female reporter in movies?) (Naomi Watts) to prove that the cause is something other than faulty circuits or sabotage and more along the lines of thinking, man made evil.This is a slow moving film with stock characters, average performances from the leads, and some good actors (Edward Herman, Michael Ironside, Ron Perlman) in small roles.
Fortunately the film knows that it's plot is ludicrous to say the least, and decides to play it out with tongue firmly placed in cheek, making the movie run at a good clip.
I rented the DVD from a Blockbuster, deceived by the plot summary in the back of the case: "Mysterious deaths are happening in an elevator, so an investigator tries to find what is going on" or something like that; "sounds interesting", I thought.
We also get some interesting views from the top floors of the skyscrapers looking into apartment windows.Naomi Watts and James Marshall eventually join together to find the cause of these death, and wouldn't you know it, a mad scientist is involved.
After the attack, it's not likely a film of this sort would have been allowed to rattle the nerves of the already nervous New York City dwellers who witnessed an attack on their landmark buildings.RON PERLMAN, EDWARD HERRMANN and MICHAEL IRONSIDE are unable to give much gravitas to the absurd story, but there are several chilling scenes involving the elevator shaft that makes the whole thing at least worth a watch and some gruesome deaths by elevator.Strictly a below average horror film, enlivened by some good staging of key scenes but crying out for better plotting and dialog.
For the most part Dick Maas's "Down" (alternately called "The Shaft") is your typical horror movie, with some people trying to stop a supremely evil force.
Libyans!" to policemen escorting her who do believe there is a terrorist threat.After having investigated the problem elevator Jeff says, "it's like airplanes going down and no one ever finds out why." This is the first of a number of weird ways this film seems to reference 9/11 though apparently predating it (much more so later).
Says one of them, "chaos, the whole city, the whole country in total turmoil?"As the building is surrounded by the NYC Police Emergency Service, some of whom are unloading weapons from a truck, we have this exchange: "Stingers?" "Terrorists have airplanes too." "Ah, you don't believe that (excrement) now, do you?" "The President does!"A moment later, they continue: "I think this whole thing is blown out of proportion." "Well, they almost got the Twin Towers ten years ago." And shortly thereafter, "if you see Bin Laden, say hello!"End credits have thanks to the New York City Mayor's Office for Film, Theater and Broadcasting, and to the New York City Police Department Movie Unit..
Last night saw a film called "The Shaft" (Dutch title "Down") The movie stars Naiomi Watts a and Michael Ironside.The plot: An elevator in a NYC skyscraper is killing people, and its up to NAiomi and an elevator repairman to figure out why.Its kinda slow in the beginning, but it does have some good gore.
With such a bad premise, one can certainly imagine how the half-baked plot plays out.It's hard to think of one good thing about this movie.
In a way it was a throwback to the 80's with cheesy dialog, characters, and implausible situations.Good old New York City has a very nice building called The Millennium Building, one of the most impressive views of the city and killer elevators...LITERALLY.
I'll will help produce it." Unless that dialog was followed by "I am also very drunk and high on crack and have only seen half this movie."Here's the story- haunted elevator shaft and weird things happen in the elevator and around the building.
The story is bad, the acting is bad and the movie should be listed as a comedy because with the storyline in the movie, it is very hard to take it seriously as a horror film.I do not recommend anybody to watch this because its awful..
I mean I love Horror films but a killer elevator sounded like a stretch but when I first saw the DVD box art I knew I had to see it.
Sure there were trying to cash in on Naomi Watts' success with The Ring and I won't even pretend The Shaft (Down) was anywhere near the ball park of The Ring but it turned out to be funny and entertaining and a little campy but with surprisingly good special effects, decent acting, and a unique original story line.
The bad language is overblown and probably because Maas felt that is what the American horror film is all about and he's not entirely wrong but the amount of times they swear is phenomenal.Let's talk Miss Naomi Watts.
James Marshall and Naomi Watts rock as the leads, and the supporting cast includes lots of great cult actors like Micheal Ironside and Ron Perlman, really bolstering the film with their performances.It's pretty far-fetched and very silly, but it does so in an appealing fashion.
But, it's still far too long with just awful acting, namely the lead: Marshall as no-good-trying-better elevator repairman, Mark Newman.
but everything in "the shaft" clicked along well enough--played by the horror movie rules, and didn't distract me with silly scenes where a person might say, "oh, no way....." and i say this buying into an elevator itself being a crazy killer.
I would of gone to see it.I'm never going to stop using elevators unless the building I'm in is on fire or I have to go up less than 4 flights of stairs.I'm going 2 watch this movie again soon.