In New York, the express elevator of the 102 floors and 73 elevators Millennium Building has malfunction with some pregnant passengers and the company responsible for its maintenance sends two mechanics, Mark Newman (James Marshall) and Jeffrey (Eric Thal),to survey the equipment and the installation. They do not find any problem in their investigation, and the building is reopened to visitors. Later, the elevator provokes the death of a security guard and a blind man with his dog. The snoopy journalist of a tabloid Jennifer Evans (Naomi Watts) joins Mark to investigate the elevator, and they find that the equipment might be subjected to an experiment with biochip by the German scientist Gunter Steinberg (Michael Ironside).

This DVD has just been released in Brazil (today, I guess) with an attractive tridimensional cover with a picture of Naomi Watts, and I bought it without any previous reference. "Down" is indeed a mess by Maas. 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. The dyed actress is very weird, with grimaces. The movie has a reasonable cast and budget, but never works. In the end, the best thing in this flick is the Aerosmith's song "Love in an Elevator". My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Elevador da Morte" ("The Elevator of Death")

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. But several aspects made this unlike any horror flick that I've ever seen.

For starters, the building has that cool art deco look from the '30s. In fact, it looks very much like the edifice in "Ghost Busters" (especially that scene of the statue on the roof). But the truly eye-opening facet is two of the songs that get used in the movie. Not only do we hear "She's Not There" by The Zombies, but there's also the original version of "Come On", of which a later version was the VERY FIRST SONG released by The Rolling Stones! Oh, and later, we hear that someone blew his mind out in a car, just as The Beatles sang in "A Day in the Life".

OK, so none of that really relates to the haunted elevator. But I found all that to be the neatest part of the movie. Otherwise it's a regular horror flick. We can forgive Naomi Watts for this one, as this was before she got really famous. In fact, just a few months before "Mulholland Drive". Also starring James Marshall, Michael Ironside, Edward Herrmann and Ron Perlman.

PS: I notice that this got released in the Netherlands on September 6, 2001. Had they waited five days, a movie about unpleasant occurrences in a New York skyscraper would have no longer been acceptable.

You know, people will probably bust up this movie, but it was really pretty good. It had a bit of a far fetched plot, but it was funny in places and the gore wasn't bad. The bit when the elevator chopped off the guy's head was a decent effect -- slow motion and relatively seamless. And the fact that they had references to terrorism in a NY skyscraper -- before 9/11 -- was pretty cool. Even made reference to the 93 attempt on the WTC and to Bin Laden -- a while before the actual event. Eerie. At least someone out there connected the dots. I'd rent it again.