Do You Face The Door in an Elevator?
When the idea of a haunted or possessed elevator comes across the feed, immediately you expect garbage. Especially when the producers are trying to sell this idea to you. It’s not advertised as comedy or horror/comedy, but a legit horror movie. What’s even more surprising is when they do sell it as such, and it turns out that the movie is great. Yes, that’s right, The Lift is about a possessed elevator and it’s a good watch. Going up or going down either way, let’s jump into this one.
Call Me Plato - It's Philosophy Time
philosophy. Call me Plato and here we go. Most of the horror we watch even when it’s scary, is completely unbelievable. A man who never seems to die in some mask is chasing people and you can’t hide from them. You run, they walk and catch you. Look at a movie like The Ring or this one, The Lift and there’s a different element to it. Sure, elevators are not going to come alive and kill people but it’s the fact that we all use these. We all watch TV. When you start to get into people’s minds and plant what-ifs like in The Lift or The Ring, you mess with their psyche and that’s what I think makes this creepy on a different and effective level.
Stamp Your Blog Passport Because The Lift Takes Us to Amsterdam!
Stamp your Invisible Katana Artwork movie blog passport with Amsterdam because that’s where the filming locations for The Lift are. You can find more details on this here but, it’s always exciting to see other countries certainly in different decades. With another country comes many things in the background to pay attention to. For instance, there are odd posters written in Dutch. Street signs are unique, cars are completely different, architecture holds distinctive qualities, and sometimes very odd never seen before pieces too. In Teen Wolf, it was the stacker urinals. You can read my blog on this 80’s Michael Jay Fox classic here. In The Omen it was the single person moving elevator which you can read more about here. In The Lift, it was a rolling towel that looked like a conveyor belt in the restroom to dry your hands. I have never seen this before.
Cool Stuff to See in The Lift
Filmed in 1983, The Lift had a lot of older buildings in it. A bowling alley was featured in one scene and seeing this in its 70s-80s glory is great. Coffee vending machines and the inner workings and circuits of elevators from the day are common too. Electronic circuitry has certainly changed. In a few scenes, we see things happen that were realistic then but almost impossible now. While we can still socially engineer our way into a facility, breaking and entering is not so simple. 1983 didn’t offer the cameras and security systems we have in place today. A man on a personal espionage mission can’t just access a roof door without likely being detected any longer.
Believe it or not, The Lift was Creepy
The Lift was creepy, and I was impressed. I really didn’t expect to say that but, this one surprised me. One scene where a blind man walks into an open elevator shaft took my stomach – never has this happened to me! I’m not being figurative here but serious. I was taken back to Resident Evil, another creepy movie, with a decapitation at the hands of an elevator. The Lift had a good budget, great acting, a steady pace, holds the viewer’s attention, there’s a unique plot and story, and it was unbelievable but very creative at the same time. Again, it was creepy and caught me off guard. My only bad feedback is that the main character didn’t get his wife back and he wasn’t even cheating on her. Oh well, he didn’t seem to care so maybe I shouldn’t either. This wasn’t a love story after all.
We've Reached The Ground Floor
We’re almost at the ground floor now and, my blog on The Lift is drawing to a close. The Lift presented a couple of concerning and interesting things when compared to headlines of today. At one point, they are discussing computer chips. The scientist is explaining the benefits of implanting chips into humans to enhance them. Today, we are talking about this and are probably doing it somewhere. Computer chips fused with DNA or living tissue (the cause of our crazy elevator) is tied to artificial intelligence, which we all know is around more and more today. As I was authoring a recent blog, I noticed that WordPress offers AI services on Yoast now. Duolingo is even offering an “explain the answer” feature that utilizes AI technology. Maybe elevators will start killing us for fun one day? Leave your comments below.
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