THE LIFT: Eerie, Atmospheric, and Inventive Horror Movie

The Vanishing by George Sluizer is widely regarded as one of the most terrifying films in cinema history, Tom Six’s The Human Centipede is considered an exceptionally disgusting cinematic experience, and in other areas, there is the work of Alex van Warmerdam, the leading Dutch surrealist. There is also Dick Maas, a director who, perhaps by accident, was born in the Netherlands instead of the United States. His cinema is so American that he was given not one, but two opportunities to make a career there. His debut horror film De lift / The Lift (1983) remains the most well-known work of his career, not only because the antagonist is a murderous elevator.

The main character of the film is Felix (Huub Stapel), a mechanic trying to figure out why the elevator in a certain Amsterdam skyscraper has turned against its users. At first, it refuses to release four drunken people, simultaneously blocking their access to oxygen. These poor souls will survive, but the blind old man will not, as he falls into the elevator shaft, drawn in by the sound of the opening doors. There will be other victims, dying in various gruesome ways. Meanwhile, Felix, paired with an inquisitive journalist Mieke (Willeke van Ammelrooy), begins to investigate the company responsible for the elevator’s software.

Maas not only directed The Lift but also wrote the script and the music, using synthesizer sounds reminiscent of the compositions of John Carpenter. The beginning of the film is so effectively eerie, atmospheric, and inventive that if it weren’t for the fact that the characters speak Dutch, Maas’s debut could be mistaken for something that could have been directed by the director of Halloween. The elevator “attacks” are full of tension and horror, but what stands out is the sinister nature of the attacker, on one hand, inhuman in its mechanical essence, yet on the other, enjoying playing with its future victims.

An example of the first method of operation is the brilliant scene of decapitation of a night guard. The initial laughter—when we see how the elevator doors clamp the man’s head like pincers, and his partner suggests bringing soap to help—quickly gives way to terror, which intensifies due to the slow pace. The elevator relentlessly descends to expertly sever the man’s head, while the other looks on in horror and helplessness. This moment, the best in the film, is intense but, in its composition of shots, editing, and sound, oddly charming. It’s a gloomy charm, though. A completely different tone is struck by the scene with a little girl, before whose eyes one of the elevator’s three doors keeps opening, inviting her to play a game like tag. The ending of this game is not as catastrophic as it could have been, but I appreciate how Maas finds various ways to present his titular villain, never repeating himself.

It is unfortunate, then, that after the first 30 minutes filled with terror and mystery, the screenplay focuses on the main character’s sluggish investigation, during which he is also unjustly suspected of infidelity by his wife. Neither of these developments is necessary or interesting. Similarly, the attempt to add comedic elements often falls completely flat. It is clear that Maas had a huge problem with developing the plot and filling it with valuable material that would push the story in the right direction. At some point, the elevator’s deadly actions are explained in a way that brings The Lift closer to science fiction and the fears popular in cinema at the time that technology would turn against mankind. The atmosphere of horror dissipates, and even the finale, in which the protagonist faces the elevator alone, feels strangely unemotional.

Nevertheless, it is hard not to consider the Dutch debut as extremely promising, with several moments showcasing a remarkable command over horror. And although the idea of making an elevator with its own consciousness the main threat seems as silly as a murderous tire or a killer sofa, The Lift never, for a moment, falls into the absurdity of its premise, striking the perfect balance between a grim atmosphere and the outlandish solutions that, in the hands of another director, would have elicited feelings of embarrassment.

The film was quite successful, which led to an invitation for Maas to go to America, an offer the director expertly sabotaged. First, he was offered to direct A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, and later a film with the then-popular Jean-Claude Van Damme, but in both cases, the Dutchman declined. Instead of a horror film about Freddy (which ultimately was made by Renny Harlin, starting his Hollywood career), he chose The Curse of Amsterdam, a tonally uneven mix of horror and action cinema, which some circles still consider cult. Later, he became involved in domestic production in the Netherlands, which meant that he did not make the film with JCVD, but on the other hand, it was in his studio that Mike van Diem’s Oscar-winning Character was made.

Maas did not give up and decided to invite himself to Hollywood, first inviting American stars to the Netherlands and making the comedy-thriller The Silent Witness (not to be confused with The Silent Witness by Anthony Waller!) with William Hurt, Jennifer Tilly, and Denis Leary, and later remaking The Lift in New York as Down, starring James Marshall, Naomi Watts (the same year she also appeared in Mulholland Drive), and Ron Perlman. Unfortunately, both films turned out to be failures, mainly due to the Dutchman’s mentality, whose sense of humor and taste did not always align with the action genre. Especially in the case of the new version of The Lift, one can see how much Maas overdid it on practically every front, turning the atmospheric horror of the original into an overloaded, kitschy, and downright silly film. At the same time, not all elements that worked in the original “translate” to the new version, especially the dialogue and character behavior.

Today, Maas creates exclusively in his home country, though not without success abroad. His most recent film, Prooi, a thriller about a lion rampaging through the streets of Amsterdam, performed poorly in the Netherlands but became an unexpected hit in China. Perhaps the next stage of the career of the director of The Lift awaits him there, the same place where Renny Harlin, who took over the Freddy Krueger film from him, has been living for several years. Do all roads lead to China?