Elevator Game

This is not terrible by any means. I can imagine that with someone like Sam Raimi at the helm this might have become a decent, scary little horror film. However what we have is TikTok driven fan fiction.

There are one or two jump scares here and there but none of it makes any sense.

The major problem is the acting or rather the over acting, the over emoting, the actors and their total lack of talent. Everyone is absolutely awful. So bad that we end up rooting for the elevator demon type thingy.

There may be another one, who can say. It was obviously filmed on a small budget however it didn't crack a million at the box office.

I enjoyed this from well enough so would certainly suggest it's worth 90 minutes of your time. It's well put together and the cast are pretty committed. There's some decent effects and a few moments of real tension and creepiness, though I think the solid premise could have been exploited better.

What let's the film down a little, for me, is seemingly rushed characterisation and pretty tame finale. I'd have been tempted to lean further into the gore in this one too.

Overall, it's a good slice of fun with some good laughs and a couple of creepy moments, but one that could have been much better given its decent collection of parts.

Again with this tacky social media challenge/investigator horror movie formula. Shudder wiffed on this one. The setup in the first few minutes was probably the best part, and that's not saying much. The next 30-45 minutes of a bunch of social media hucksters banter back and forth is quite dull. I was not interested in anything they had to say, and no interest watching them stumble through their pitiful plight on their devices. Sometime after that we get a frightening scene, more pointless dialogue, and then we get to watch someone sift through web pages for a while.. and then I think I dozed off. I gave it a star for some ok-but-sparse tense scenes, but I couldnt come up with anything else worth mentioning. Bottom of the barrel stuff for Shudder flicks.

What a shower of crap. Just sat through this childish supposed to be, wanna be, horror film and hate myself for doing so.

It's like an episode Goosebumps,only with worse acting and less scares.

With a very low budget and very dislikeable characters,you just end up disliking everything about it.

I sometimes wonder why these films are even made because who in their right minds would enjoy making or watching stuff like this?

So anyway they've taken a game I'm sure everyone's heard about and actually had a chance to make something that could have been at least watchable. However they failed badly, buy just making a teen type cringefest.

If I were you I'd avoid this like the plague.

So I was born in the early 80s and, as a result, I grew up in a time when video rentals were a thing. Back then, if you rented a horror movie, it could fall into one of three categories: Big-budget film that had had a major cinema release, small-budget indie that was made by creative people with limited resources, or small-budget cash grab, made by people who just viewed making films as a way to make some money, with no real creativity or imagination involved; make the box look interesting and someone will pay to watch it.

Movies are distributed differently nowadays but, had it been released back then, The Elevator Game would fall into the latter category.

The plot is formulaic and unimaginative, locking on to a particular idea that the filmmakers thought was current and popular (It's already out-dated). It tries to incorporate modern tropes, such as YouTube videos and influencers, but does it so ineptly that it just shows how little actual knowledge the people at the helm have of these things, resorting to exaggerated and inaccurate stereotypes.

The characters are all stereotypical horror archetypes with zero depth, and the casting of some characters defies belief (why does the "high-school intern" look older than his colleagues?)

The make-up and effects are about the level you'd expect from a mediocre Halloween party.

The acting is generally poor but, to be fair, I think there is some real talent here. The problem is the capable actors are stifled by awful scripting and direction. I won't single anyone out but there are actors in this film who I really can see - and hope I will see - going on to bigger and better things.

Ultimately, this just felt like an unimaginative, made-to-order movie that was created solely to pad out Shudder's library of original films and earn someone, somewhere a few extra bucks.