just watch it!

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Four annoying customers at a restaurant stay late during a lightning storm. They leave and step inside an elevator. The elevator stops because the power goes out. While stuck in the elevator, the heating goes berserk (two people start having sex)! Thankfully, they survive, but management decides to hire Felix (Huub Stapel), a technician, to figure out the problem with the unstable lift.Stylish goofball black horror comedy supplies sufficient elevator kills (about three or four). The film manages to convey some tension with strong production design, special effects (most of the death scenes are shot backwards), and direction.The subplots (mainly the one concerning infidelity) and exposition deescalate the film. Also, find this film in Dutch because I had to grit my teeth through some of the dubbing. "De Lift" entertains and manages to waste time.

In a high rise office building in the Netherlands, an elevator repairman named Felix Adelaar (Huub Stapel) is busy trying to solve a mystery. The elevators in this place are now functioning improperly, incapacitating passengers if not killing them outright. Could the cause be some sort of human error, or is something supernatural going on? Felix works the clues in the company of an aggressive, sassy reporter, Mieke de Beer (Willeke van Ammelrooy).Writer & director Dick Maas ("Amsterdamned") deserves some credit for treating his premise with some measure of restraint. Therefore, it won't be to all tastes. It admittedly comes up a little short in the thrills department, with a slow pace and a talky script. Yet, there are fun moments, such as when an unfortunate security guard is decapitated by an elevator. Also, Stapel is an appealing working-class, Everyman sort of hero, and he has some chemistry with the striking van Ammelrooy. They receive able support from players such as Josine van Dalsum (as Felix's wife), Siem Vroom (as a police inspector), and Hans Veerman (as the boss at "Rising Sun", the electronics company working in tandem with Felix's employers).The script does possess some passing interest for the way that it touches upon the subject of technological evolution (with computers that used to fill up entire rooms now becoming much more compact, and the advent of computer chips)."The Lift" is a little light on gore and other exploitable elements, but overall it's fairly entertaining to watch. Maas does pretty well working with the limited budget, and IS expert at crafting suspense, especially the eerie and atmospheric finale with Felix in an elevator shaft. The electronic score (composed by Maas) is likewise a highlight.One of the set decorators is Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., who 28 years later, directed the prequel to John Carpenters' "The Thing".Seven out of 10.

This little Dutch chiller is a cut above the rest due to the director's fine ability to maintain suspense throughout what is in reality, a slow-moving and relatively action-less film. The idea of a killer lift is at once laughable, but the makers of this film get over that hurdle by slowly and surely building up tension as the lift takes every opportunity to destroy anything that comes near it. The basic yet powerful music score (composed by the director, Dick Maas) helps to add to the feel of the film, a feeling of unknown terror and evil.The acting is fine; the dubbing is obvious but doesn't detract in this case. The male lead is more than capable of carrying the role of a lift repair man and is actually quite charismatic; we actually care for him when he's put into danger. The female journalist is surprisingly non-annoying, considering the stereotyped role she fits, and the pair spark together well as an early variation of Mulder and Scully. As for the others, they're more amusing than anything, especially the ill-conceived asylum scene.The deaths here are mainly off-screen, with one notable exception. A guy gets his head jammed in lift doors, and is then decapitated by the descending lift in one of the evillest, most imaginative death scenes I've ever witnessed on film. It's a masterful moment. As for the other deaths, they're kept to a minimum, apart from at the over-the-top finale. It seems that once the nudity and violence has been dispensed with at the opening of this film, it settles back into investigation mode, with plenty of dialogue to keep things moving along. The foreign setting makes a nice change too.The aforementioned finale is actually very good, with Stapel getting involved in some DIE HARD-style heroics while swinging about in the lift shaft. It turns out that all the trouble is the cause of some artificially intelligent computer chips, you could have fooled me! The final twist, where a cable twists out of the lift to wrap around another victim's next, is sped up and actually shocking. Don't be put off by the low budget or the obscure nature of this film, it's not a bad little piece and achieves what it sets out to do.

An elevator seems to have a mind of its own, and it is deathly. The director builds a solid horror movie on people's fear of elevators. This is clearly a B-horror movie, but as such it is good. There are various truly shocking scenes. The story line is very simple. The main character is an elevator-repairman and he must repair an elevator that caused an accident. What he finds out is truly bizarre and unbelievable, but scary nonetheless.One of the best dutch made horror movies (but frankly, I don't know many other dutch horror movies).