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.
