Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Amateur movie with Big budget

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

I have to laugh at the commentary from movie reviewers who take themselves and an obviousloy fun, clever movie too seriously. This movie has tight dialogue, doesn't bog down half way through and good action. Go ahead and spend a few hours with this enjoyable flick.

It amazes me how often deliberately cheesy, tongue-in-cheek horror films are misconstrued as poorly made garbage. Down (AKA The Shaft), director Dick Maas' 2001 remake of his own 1983 Dutch horror De Lift, opens with the camera gliding gracefully over the NY skyline to eventually come to rest on 'The Millennium Building' where two night watchmen use an observation telescope to spy on big-breasted hookers at work in a neighbouring skyscraper; it's a superbly executed and wonderfully trashy opening that should make it crystal clear that Maas knows exactly what he is doing—making a highly entertaining, campy schlock/horror that shouldn't be taken seriously—and yet there are still those who seem to have missed the joke.Oh well, it's their loss, because when viewed as intended, Down proves to be a lot of fun, packed as it is with outrageously silly deaths, delightfully daft dialogue, and knowingly clichéd characters—precisely the kind of stuff I would expect to see in a horror film about a murderous 'living' elevator controlled by a malevolent state-of-the-art computer chip enhanced by living brain tissue.An excellent cast clearly have a blast in their two-dimensional stock roles, with a gorgeous pre-A-list Naomi Watts as a feisty newspaper reporter, James Marshall as a cocky elevator engineer, Ron 'Hellboy' Perlman as the shady owner of the elevator company, Dan Hedaya as a grizzled NY detective, and Michael 'Scanners' Ironside as a loathsome scientist hellbent on perfecting his pet project, whatever the cost. Maas keeps the action moving along at a brisk pace, handling the special effects set-pieces, wry humour, and gruesome shocks with confidence, even going so far as to kill off women, children, and animals along the way.And if all that isn't enough to pique your interest, let's not forget about the eerily prophetic scene in which characters discuss the possible use of a plane in a terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre; with 9/11 just around the corner, it stands out as a genuinely chilling moment in an otherwise intentionally ridiculous and wonderfully OTT piece of nonsense.7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

This gets 2 stars instead of 1 because the production values were surprisingly good for such an otherwise poorly made movie. Terrible dialogue and plotting, and a story that...well, you just wonder why anyone put the amount of money into this movie it obviously took to produce it.Several named actors (Dan Hedeya, Ron Pearlman, Edward Herman) try manfully in their scenes to make the wordy dialogue work, as does a then little known Naomi Watts. I'd say I feel sorry for Ms. Watts, having to take roles like this while her best friend (Nicole Kidman) is doing Moulin Rouge! and other top films, but fortunately Naomi more than landed on her feet a year later with Mulholland Dr., which made her a star. We all have to pay our dues, I guess - this was part of Watts', and even Kidman had BMX Bandits in her past...

The "Millennium" building (which looks suspiciously like the Empire State Building) has an elevator that likes to get rid of riders -- the express way, if you know what I mean.The how's and why's of the attacks are only hinted at with a few scattered morsels of information. Most of the time, it's just a parade of people approaching the elevator; some die (in some very gory ways), others don't. There is some suggestion that the victims are evil in some way, but even that isn't consistent. Management tries to ignore the problem, as always. The elevator wraith, or whatever it is, has only so many ways it can do its evil deeds, so it utilizes as much variety in its repertoire of kills to entertain itself as it can. The movie usually tries to hope the tension of nearby potential victims is enough.One irony to note: This was Naomi Watts lesser-known monster encounter in this building: she would be climbing around the outside with a giant ape amidst a hail of bullets a few years later.The movie squeezes out the most it can from the premise, and is mildly entertaining.