“Elevator Game”: A Movie With Ups And Downs, That Needs To Be Elevated | Review
It happened to me when I was a teenager. I got into the elevator with my best friend, and we decided to have fun by randomly pressing floors because there was probably no need to rush at that age. It happened while we enjoyed the long climb to the fourth floor via the second, third, and fifth floors while sitting on the elevator floor since it is super cool. Suddenly, the door opened on the fifth floor, and a scary-looking woman stood outside, looking at the two children sitting on the elevator floor with most buttons pressed. “What the hell are you doing?” the annoying neighbor shouted in a scary voice. “Um… we’re just resting. Yes, resting,” I said in a stammering voice. “It’s been a tough day at school”. She looked at me like a ghost and growled: “So go and rest at home, Idiot.” Horrified by this crazy bitch, we decided to take the rest of the route by the stairs because they say it’s better for our health.
As I learned the hard way that day, an elevator is no place for games. The good news is that it can be a source of urban legends, thanks to the horror movies that teach such things. In 2023, “Elevator Game” was released by Shudder, mainly for the small screen and streaming networks, and in a minimal form for distribution in theaters in the United States.
So, is this elevator long gone, or should you go on a ride full of fun horror? You are invited to read the following “Elevator Game” review and decide.
What Is The Elevator Game (Spoiler: Another Weird Internet Trend)
I like movies about urban legends, even if some are distributed online without much logic (What is known as a “Creepypasta,” meaning something scary that we copy and paste). Among all those messages with the daunting “forwarded many times” indicator on WhatsApp, we came across the “Elevator Game” a few years ago. If I understand correctly (because I don’t get involved in such silly trends), this challenge started in Japan around 2008. Later, it reached South Korea and the rest of the world in an adapted English version via the Internet.
How To Play the elevator game? The principle is that participants must press the elevator buttons in a specific order and, of course, record it because if it is not on social media, it didn’t happen. If they do everything by the book, reach the fifth floor, and close their eyes, they will arrive in the “red spirit realm,” which is a kind of ghost world that is probably red because red is the color of horror.
The problem is that failure at some point in the game, especially opening their eyes before the elevator doors close, will result in them meeting the “Fifth Floor Woman,” who is perhaps (just perhaps) a little more terrifying and dangerous than that annoying neighbor in my childhood building.
The Plot Of Elevator Game
In the film’s opening scene, we meet Becky (Megan Best, “Bring it On: Cheer or Die,” “Seance,” “Time Cut,” and “Dark Harvest)” playing the elevator game, documenting the experience. The game ends with flashing lights, a scary person sneaking up behind her, a frightened look when Becky sees what’s going into the elevator, and a great scream by the actress, which explains why we’ve seen her in so many horror movies. Later, we realize that Becky has disappeared, leaving no trace.
Our heroes are YouTubers working on a network show called “Nightmare on Dare Street” that reviews urban legends. Most of the crew are annoying because that’s what works nowadays in the internet age. We meet Ryan (Gino Anania, “Bring it On: Cheer or Die,” “Dark Harvest,” and “I Still See You” with Bella Thorne), an intern who joins the Young vloggers, which include Chloe (Verity Marks from the disappointing “Toys of Terror”), Kris (Alec Carlos, “Bring it On: Cheer or Die,” “Orphan: First Kill”), Matty (Nazariy Demkowicz, “Radius”, “Dark Harvest”), Izzy Madison MacIsaac, “Bring it On: Cheer or Die,”) and Kevin (Liam Stewart-Kanigan, “Love Hurts”). To please potential or existing advertisers, Ryan suggests making an episode about the elevator game, which will explore, among other things, the mystery of Becky’s disappearance.
The guys play the elevator game, but something goes wrong in the middle – because other people also want to use the elevator in an office building. After one of the team members finds himself dead in his home, the rest realize that they must continue investigating the urban legend. As you can deduce, some of the heroes will understand what happened in that elevator once, and some will find their deaths in more or less creative ways.
Later on, we will realize that one of the characters may have a direct connection to Becky, and another character has a slightly darker connection related to Becky, but, of course, we will not sin with spoilers here. In a horror movie, it is always worth suspecting the intentions of someone who suggests an idea others accept because some interest may have made him suggest it.
Former Cheerleaders Enter The Elevator
Do you know that joke about the cheerleaders who entered the elevator together? Well, the truth is that I don’t either. I searched the Internet and even asked CHAT GPT to compose some jokes about cheerleaders in the elevator for me, but they were terrible, so I’m not going to give them respect by writing them. But trust me, they are awful.
The bottom line is that a sentence like “Some former cheerleaders (including male cheerleaders!) got into an elevator” sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s not. This is the starting point of the horror film “Elevator Game.” At least, if you look at who’s behind the film and stars in it, and what their (relatively short) resume was in the past.
As the sharp-eyed among you may have noticed in the previous paragraphs with many movie names in parentheses, a large part of the cast here played in “Bring it On: Cheer or Die,” which we reviewed here on the site as one of the horror films about cheerleaders (you’d be surprised, but it’s a great guilty pleasure sometimes). There is a close connection between these films and several other films that starred in parentheses.
“Elevator Game” was directed by Rebekah McKendry, who was one of the writers of “Bring it On: Cheer or Die” and has directed several small horror films, such as “All the Creatures Were Stirring”(2018) and “Glorious” (2022). She is married to David Ian McKendry, who is one of the writers of “Elevator Game,” along with Travis Seppala (writer of the vampire film “Captive” with scream queen Scout Taylor Cophamton). David Ian McKendry collaborated with his wife on other projects as a director, writer, producer, or whatever. In other words, “from the creators of…”.
Does The Cast of Elevator Game Deliver?
One of the main problems with “Elevator Game” is that some characters lack uniqueness or interest. If we look at it from a different perspective, several actors here lack charisma, which is subtle (without mentioning names). For example, one of the characters is supposed to lead the others toward a dynamic and fascinating mission. Still, he uses most of the film in a tone that sounds like he is explaining tax policy or software engineering to the characters. (Note: The writer has no idea about such topics.)
On the other hand, there are some plausible characters here who play with a little more enthusiasm, some actors who managed to stand out a little more than others and make the character more cute than a character who looks good on paper, and even characters with a comic dimension (well, mainly the character of Matty who is responsible for some decent jokes). The dialogues here are not something to take home in terms of their language and content. Most of the time, they don’t contribute to promoting the film.
Is The Elevator Game Scary?
Oh, and what about the horror? Here, alongside some creative and fun kills, you will find some that are predictable and ineffective: a cheap jump scares, an evil entity hiding behind a character, and so on. The kills also don’t allow us to understand precisely the extent of the danger of the ghost, the woman from the fifth floor, or whoever she may be. You won’t find any scary or overly tense scenes here, and certainly not ones you’ll remember after you leave the elevator and go home.
There are no clear rules regarding the degree of threat and their danger zones. The formula of “you broke the rules, and therefore you awakened something that can attack you at any time, but especially when you are alone and in a dark place” is too worn out today.
The Challenge: Bringing An Urban Legend About An Elevator To The Screen
I’m not sure that “Elevator Game” justifies its screen time, even if it is a reasonably limited screen time of less than an hour and a half. The film fails to expand too much on the initial idea (problematic as it may be) and certainly does not create a story that we care about or what the characters will discover during it.
We end up with a haunted house-style film (or, in this case, a cursed ritual), with a triggering event that causes the release of a malevolent force that kills the characters one by one. This form seems coincidental because characters are attacked in an elevator and at home, sitting at a bus stop, and so on.
The problem is that this narrative, in my opinion at least, is the exact opposite of coincidental: because we see a character in some isolated place, with signs such as noises or changes in lighting, and realize that we will very soon say goodbye to them, and sometimes even how and when. We’ve seen it more successfully in great movies like “Talk to Me” or even in other movies that were problematic but at least quite enjoyable, like “Tarot,” “Baghead,” and others. Here, there are almost no surprises, and you can understand how they will develop during the scene (or even a specific shot), like those annoying people who hum the lyrics of a song they hear a few seconds before the singer to show that they know them.
In them, it’s clear to us that there are rules designed for the characters to break – and between us, how complicated it is to press floors in an elevator in a specific order and not open your eyes or speak before the ritual is complete – which will cause a vicious circle. To get out of it, you must go a little backward, understand the background story, and take action, most of which will probably fail because otherwise, there wouldn’t be a horror movie here. In “Elevator Game,” there are some attempts to shed light on some of the characters and present their problems, past or present, but it’s not enough.
The creators faced a serious challenge in advance – because how interesting can scenes that are supposed to build tension while moving between floors, pressing buttons, and opening doors, while some character records themselves doing it for social media? The characters are also aware of the problematic nature of conveying the story reflexively, but that’s no excuse. With more imagination or creativity, we would have gotten something that would bring more tension into our lives.
Look, not every elevator scene has to be as masterful as the one from “The Shining” or even as suspenseful and full of surprises as “Evil Dead Rise” because not every director is Stanley Kubrick, and sometimes the film’s budget is minimal. Still, the cinematic work here is well-made, but it may be too routine. On the positive side, some interesting ideas regarding lighting, colors, and camera angles exist. The film’s editing is reasonable, and the effects seem solid at most.
If you take into account the fact that between the scary scenes, we get uninteresting characters with dry dialogues that don’t advance the plot, you understand why the film progresses towards its destination too slowly. It’s like waiting for the only elevator in a crowded hotel.
The Problem: The Elevators Aren’t Horrific Enough
Look, I like horror movies about elevators. Elevators can be inherently scary because we are still in a very enclosed space, sometimes at great heights, with dangers such as falling or sudden darkness. The problem is that “Elevator Game” fails to intrigue us regarding location. It takes place in an office building that is too generic, which reminded me more of the horror of the last visit to the dentist and less of the horror associated with legends about ghosts or mysterious Internet phenomena that end in death.
“Elevator Game” fails to take advantage of its location and, unfortunately, has difficulty playing on the natural fears of elevators, which exist among quite a few people in the population. There is not too much claustrophobic feeling here, and most of the scares are related to jump scares or a figure with a scary face who slowly comes up behind the characters and does something to them, which we sometimes only see implicitly. You could see it more as a less successful version of “The Grudge” or “The Ring,” for example, but not too different from the elevator scare videos that sometimes find success on YouTube.
The main villain is played by Samantha Halas, on whose resume we have only found one small role so far (stunt of Fiona’s ghost in the unnecessary “The Grudge” from 2019, whatever the hell that means). Throughout the film, she wipes herself off alongside the characters, goes in creative ways, and wears scary makeup. It’s nice and sometimes works, but it’s not too effective if you look at it broadly. It would have improved if the film had added more creative ways to create tension or scares to its arsenal.
If that’s not enough, we don’t connect with the characters here or even the place where they operate. On the one hand, TikTok accounts and many references to our viral world have always interested me. On the other hand, from what I know, today’s vloggers and influencers don’t precisely use equipment like the guys in our film. It feels like someone tried to “forcefully” connect with the world of young people but didn’t precisely implement the culture of Generation Z. At one point, I felt the movie was trying to create identification while speaking the language of the alleged target audience, without actually understanding it, so that the result is a bit artificial, like an advertisement made with AI.
Should You Watch Elevator Game?
“Elevator Game” received pretty bad reviews and seldom received a commercial release worldwide, and it’s hard to say that it is successful in any way. But, here is my problem: I found it enjoyable for the most part, despite countless failures and flaws. Its pace is reasonable at times, there are interesting characters here and there (or at least some that look good), and the murder of annoying young people who act stupidly is always fun, if only for the simple reason that we enjoy seeing the stupid characters do something silly that will make us get rid of their annoying presence for the rest of the film.
“Elevator Game” is a spoof of an idea that could have been very enjoyable. You’ll find quite a few failures here regarding the cinematic work, the characters, the acting, and the bottom line of how scary or enjoyable the film is. Under these conditions, it’s hard to say that this is a must-see, certainly not in the cinema, and some would say that it’s mainly suitable for times when you’re looking for something to pass the time without having to think or watch too much.
On the other hand, the film does offer some decent ideas; it has some compelling scenes and some characters who manage to stand out in a subgenre that I enjoy even when the result is far from perfect.
Elevator Game – Frequently Asked Questions
When was the Elevator Game movie released? The release date of the movie was February 7, 2023.
Who Directed Elevator Game? Rebecca McKendry
Who Played in the Elevator Game movie? The film’s cast includes Megan Best, Gino Anania, Alec Carlos, Madison MacIsaac, Verity Marks, Nazariy Demkowicz, and more.
Who wrote the Elevator Game? The film’s screenplay was written by David Ian McKendry (the director’s husband…) and Travis Seppala.
How long is the Elevator Game? 97 minutes
When was the movie produced? In the United States
What was the budget of the film? Undisclosed
How much did the movie gross? Approximately $370,000, according to Box Office Mojo. The film was meant chiefly for streaming.
What is the MPAA rating (Parent guide) of Elevator Game? The film was not rated.
What do The Reviews Say About The Elevator Game Movie? The film got mixed to negative reviews. It has a 4.2 rating on IMDB and only 33% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
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