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Great Film overall

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Four annoying customers at a restaurant stay late during a lightning storm. They leave and step inside an elevator. The elevator stops because the power goes out. While stuck in the elevator, the heating goes berserk (two people start having sex)! Thankfully, they survive, but management decides to hire Felix (Huub Stapel), a technician, to figure out the problem with the unstable lift.Stylish goofball black horror comedy supplies sufficient elevator kills (about three or four). The film manages to convey some tension with strong production design, special effects (most of the death scenes are shot backwards), and direction.The subplots (mainly the one concerning infidelity) and exposition deescalate the film. Also, find this film in Dutch because I had to grit my teeth through some of the dubbing. "De Lift" entertains and manages to waste time.

Eric Deighton's review of De Lift (1983)*Warning spoilers*Everyone loves John Carpenter's Halloween. De Lift is the Dutch answer to Halloween. Like John Carpenter, Director, Dick Maas, writes, directs and composes the music for the movie De Lift (1983). Dick Maas does a great job at all three roles. The plot is well written and slowly builds suspense and intrigue. The movie is slickly directed and contains a number of trick camera shots (like the bowling scene) and an overall very stylistic camera work. The lighting of the exterior of the elevator is especially effective. The score is a clearly Carpenter-inspired synthesized bit of music that really adds to the atmosphere of this movie.Director Dick Maas has created a great looking film. The film looks and feels like a 1980's horror movie should. I felt while watching this movie that Dick Maas must have been heavily influenced by Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", but in interviews Dick Maas insists that the Lift is his take on Steven Spielberg's "Jaws". Dick Maas has stated that he wanted the same feel in De Lift as the audience felt in Jaws with the elevator taking the place of the shark. Dick Maas uses similar techniques to Spielberg as humor and horror are both presented in this film. Dick Maas has a flair for some pretty funny sight gags that are littered throughout the film. There are several false jump scenes as various characters approach the elevator only to escape unharmed. The elevator, like the shark in Jaws, is sure to eventually get its prey and each time a victim escapes it only heightens the tension.While the main setting of this film is the fancy Icarus high-rise office building, the hero is a blue collar working man played to perfection by dutch actor, Huub Stapel. This movie is full of great Dutch character actors. None of the characters in this movie seem like throw away parts. All of the characters have interesting little quirks and all seem to advance the plot and bring this story to life. Many of the actors had to take on double and sometimes triple duties to get this film made. The budget did not provide for any stunt men, so every actor did his or her own stunts, including the dangerous scenes in the elevator shaft. Additionally, the non-actor crew was pressed into service as extras for many of the shots.Yes, this is a movie about a killer elevator, but why does the elevator kill? This movie treats its subject matter very serious, to the point where this movie has the feel of a crime drama. There is much time spent following our blue collar hero (elevator repair man) around as he investigates what is causing this elevator to kill people. The investigation portion of the film includes visits to the factory, interviews with computer technicians, visits to a mental hospital to interview the last elevator repairman to work on the killer elevator and a crash course on bio-technology by an excited professor. Is the killer elevator part of some corporate conspiracy; is there some alien slime that is making the elevator kill; or, has the microchip developed not only self awareness and free will but also an organic like ability to reproduce? The movie really does not ever provide a satisfactory explanation.I watched the whole movie in Dutch with English sub-titles. I tried re-watching it in English, but the voice actors that did the dubbing work were awful and gave an uninspired performance. The Dutch version with English sub-titles is far superior. Director Dick Maas did a remake of De Lift in 2001 titled "The Shaft/Down" starring Naomi Watts.

This movie is 5% horror, 60% boring detective work, 15% dull family life, and 20% filler scenes. It's supposed to be a horror film, but most of it is as dull as actually sitting down and watching a lift repair-man in action. Well, "action".It's as if a stuffy accountant directed this thing; even the main character is apathetic, almost always unemotional, with one facial expression (like a damn painting), going about his business with the élan of a nursing-home inmate playing chess with himself. I have rarely seen such a sleepy, disinterested-looking lead male/character. The makers of this failed attempt should have aimed for either a tongue-in-cheek approach or an all-out horror film, without the unnecessary and very tiresome detective crap and the evil-corporation conspiracy nonsense. Ultimately, the film's undoing is the writer's attempt to lend this ridiculous premise some seriousness by connecting all the silly goings-on to the real world. But there is nothing even remotely serious or realistic about a malicious lift killing people, so the obvious approach would have been to give this less exposition/plot and far more action.Will the repairman keep his marriage or not? It's exciting questions like these that turned the movie into the instant horror classic that it still is today. His wife's female friend speculates on why he's been depressed lately: "Perhaps he is having an affair?" she suggests stupidly, completely ignoring the plain-as-day fact that he's involved in the repairs of an elevator that had just killed a blind man and decapitated another. This does not enter as a possibility to explain his low mood? Straight to adultery – duh; a silly plot-device introduced here for just one reason: so that the repairman can have some family trouble – as if horror films with cheesy premises thrive on family matters as their main source of fuel. This serves as yet another needless sub-plot in a movie already choking in its own inactivity.I find it hard to believe that a building with this many accidents has people going inside it, let alone using the elevators, over and over, as if nothing had happened. This sort of story would be headline news in Holland (and elsewhere), and everyone would know about it. But this medium-level illogicality is the least of the film's problems. The fact that it's dull is what most viewers, and I, were annoyed by. Far too much talk, too much focus on the elevator repairman and even his very dreary family life.A 6.1 average? Had this been an American movie, the rating would have been half that. But for some reason non-American movies are reviewed and critiqued far less harshly than American ones. It's that silly old "exotic bonus", plus a bit of envy thrown in.

And also twenty times more evil.The Lift (aka De Lift) is a horror film about an elevator. So the question is, will you be taking it to the top floor, or will you be getting off early due to the old man with gas problems standing in front of you? Of course you take it to the top! Even if this movie stunk, which it most definitely does not, you always finish off a movie about an evil elevator. Even the title itself rolls right off the tongue. Say it with me now: Evil Elevator. God, I love a good bit of alliteration.Oh, sorry, what's the film about you ask? An elevator that kills people. Oh, you want to know the details of the evil elevator story? Ugh…well, if you must know, during some fancy-pants box social that's being held at the top of some building, an elevator's power supply box (??) is struck by lightning, and thenceforth said elevator becomes conscious….of its thirst for blood!!! Oh, you want more details? You're a pushy one, aren't ye? Okay, well, after a close-call involving Ernie the Evil Elevator, our protagonist and self-appointed hero, the Elevator Mechanic, comes along and you better believe he smells something fishy. People eventually start bucket-kicking in manners only an elevator is capable of kicking buckets. Cue nosey Reporter Gal, enter sci-fi mumbo jumbo, hit that button, which floor, to the top my good sir! De Lift's (aka The Lift) ability to manifest itself from a predictable, cheesy horror movie into a film that actually delivered effective chills, engaging enough characters, and even a boob no less - was not what I was expecting. I don't exactly know what I was expecting with this here elevator movie; I guess just something much sillier. Well, I was certainly wrong about that assumption, as the viewer is elevated to heights here that are on the level, and played straight – on that same level. What I'm trying to get across here is…this is a good flick. A proper made flick about an evil elevator.One last crap joke for the road. Whaddya say? Want a crap joke? Here ya go. So, I tells Mayvis. Mayvis, I says, if you're gonna take a dump, ya gotta flush. Flushing is what gets rid of the poop, I tells Mayvis. She tells me to go flush my own dump. So I then tells Mayvis I don't need her crap anymore. Mayvis doesn't get the joke.