Elevator Game

Shopping malls, what would life be without them? You can find basically anything here no matter what you are looking for no matter if you need clothes, shoes, perfume, a new cell phone or perhaps just enjoy a fresh made dinner. I personally love the biggest shopping malls i can find. Why? The bigger it is the more stores you can look at and it doesn´t have to big too much customers lining up everywhere ( unless it is before Christmas weekend of course ). The biggest shopping mall i have been to so far was in Bangkok called Central World where the shopping mall have over 500 stores and over 100 restaurants. I also remember that they also had a huge cinema with 15 films showing each day on 15 huge screens. I actually found a DVD and blu ray store at this shopping mall so that´s where i invested in some nice releases. Shopping malls like Central World are needed because it is much more simple to go to a huge shopping mall like this than running to different stores downtown. Plus if you need to eat something you can basically find any food you want, no matter if you are a vegetarian or a meat lover. One of the things i like to do in shopping malls is go by elevator because i find it relaxing. Not many people use the elevator compared to using the escelator, so it´s nice just to go for a ride. But what if you are completely stuck inside an elevator trying to figure how to get out? That is exactly what happened in the 2010 horror film Devil from director Nelson McCormick ( director of the 2009 remake of The Stepfather ). 5 people are stuck inside an elevator in a skyskraper trying to wait for rescue workers. But inside this elevator something strange is going on when one of them suddenly dies. Devil is a simple but effective horror film where an elevator is a great location to use from a claustrophobic perspective. How do you handle a situtaion like that when you are not alone inside the elevator and unexpected things happen out of nowhere? I do like the surprise twist towards the end that explain why this happened to this group of people. Devil is definetely worth checking out on streaming or on physical media. Speaking of elevators i came across a horror film called Elevator Game on VOD and is supposed to be a horror film that have a connection to an elevator. I didn´t know much more about Elevator Game and decided to know as little as possible going into this film. Is this a horror film that´s better than i expected or is Elevator Game just as exciting as watching American Crossword Puzzle Tournament ?

A group of high school graduates run an online web series debunking urban legends. They welcome Ryan Keaton ( Gino Anania ) into the show to help them out. When one of the web series sponsors are ready to drop out unless they come up with a better idea for their next episode, Ryan suggest they should look into the new online phenomenon called Elevator Game. The group decides to do this hoping their sponsor will stay and continue to collaborate with them. Once they start playing the Elevator Game, they will find out that this is not only a game.

Those who know me personally know that im not a big fan of social media influencers, especially if you are trying to chase likes, impress people with how much money you have or if you met a celebrity and have to make yourself look cool. So i understand now that this Elevator Game is a game a lot of social media people have played just to see if it works. I have no idea if anyone would claim that it works but this film is clearly inspired by this game itself. In a way i find the idea behind Elevator Game interesting for a horror film because using an elevator is a great tool to build up horror tensions. It worked well in the 2010 horror film Devil so it might work with a completely different story set inside an elevator. Let´s start with the details that i enjoy about the Elevator Game and i have to say that this film looks good. Director Rebekah McKendry ( director of the 2022 horror film Glorious that i did enjoy ) clearly knows how to make a horror film capturing different effective angles inside ( and outside ) an elevator, and this actually helps the film become a bit more interesting. Since the elevator is such an important detail for this film it feels like Rebekah understood that this has to work. Ok, that was the positive about Elevator Game and i have several negative things to say about this film. First of all the social media show that we are supposed to believe is a real show looks really bad. If they would expect me to believe that young people would watch this show i can´t buy that. It looks incredibly cheap, no great host of the show and the ghost stories they bring to each episode doesn´t make you feel interested at all. The cast of this film is also another big problem, there really are no great characters in Elevator Game. This is nothing against the actors in general but they didn´t perform good or made any attempt to make their character interesting. What about the horror elements in Elevator Game? I wanted this to work because it is an interesting concept for a horror film, but i feel like they didn´t really try that hard. The horror scenes outside the elevator are very predictable, dull and honestly not effective at all. It´s a shame that the Elevator Game doesn´t really work as a horror film since there is a good idea behind the plot. If only director Rebekah McKendry could have fixed some very important details and this could actually have been a fun watch. As it stands now i doubt you will remember Elevator Game once you watched it.

Rating: DD