Tired of taking people up and down for hours on end to various floors, all day, every day, an elevator finally takes a stand and starts to take its frustrations out on them. First, a group of people nearly suffocate while a blind guy just happens to fall down an elevator shaft. Another man is decapitated, a little girl almost falls prey to the deadly lift and a janitor gets burned alive. Now it is up to Felix, an elevator specialist, who must stop this deadly rampage before anyone else loses their life.

The Lift is a Dutch effort from 1983, written and directed by Dick Maas and is surprisingly, a compelling affair, if a tad overlong. It is of course, about a killer elevator to use the other term for a lift, though not all is as it seems. There is a mystery afoot and Felix as played by Huub Stapel, with a little help from a reporter who refuses to quit as portrayed by Willeke van Ammelrooy, seeks to get to the bottom of it. Is it the man who runs the company in the building who is responsible or the big corporation who makes the chips? Is there some sort of conspiracy afoot or is it something much darker? Every time that Felix checks out the machine and the tech behind it all, it continuously checks out so there has to be some sort of outside interference. At least that would make things a whole lot easier. Maas turns things on its head though by the end of the picture and by doing so, makes the movie all the better for it.

There are very few creature effects, as the monster in question is an elevator but that does not prevent Maas from making this picture a suspenseful effort. It all starts off a little slowly but as time moves on, the lift becomes a menacing object for those who fall victim to it as well as Felix, who begins to suspect something is truly off when he can find nothing. One of the scariest scenes in the film involves a little girl playing by the elevators with the doors simply opening and closing, the viewer wonders if she will survive the encounter and just how it is that she will perish should the lift decide to take her life. It was a simple enough scene but shot so effectively that it grips the viewer and keeps them on the edge of their seat. That being said, Maas could have tightened things up just a bit, the film running a little slow in places where the lift was not in sight and quite possibly padding it for time but overall, the man knew how to make an inanimate object frightening which is not easy to do.

In all, The Lift is a curious little oddity from the realm of horror and one that will capture the imagination and not in a good way, at least for the next couple of times for those who want to step on an elevator. Worth a watch for its creepy atmosphere and unique premise and its even more distinctive ending.

3 out of 5