Despite its lurid and silly title, evoking the pinhead guys from the Hellraiser series, or something worse, this is a surprisingly decent little movie that combines elements from Cube, THX-1138, and Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat. Bet the last one threw you there. It is the future, and everyone is living underground, due to who knows what disaster happened on the surface. Transportation is done through tunnels, and a series of elevators that span the city, going up and down at least several hundred floors. Everything is sectioned off by floors; the women who "run" the elevators, like the elevator ladies from department stores of old, are dressed sharply and politely sound off the destination points of each floor that the passengers take. This is pretty smart - they control the elevators like a train operator, manning a series of controls, and even using an "express" option once they passed a certain floor. Travelling on this particular elevator is a teenage student on her way to school, along with a mother and her child in a carriage, a businessman, and a slacker young man plugged into his headset. Apparently in this world some of the people possess telepathic skills, and the female student can tap into anyone's minds. This might explain her unstable past, as she murdered her father in a fit of rage, and sent to a mental institute for rehabilitation. But in the beginning of the movie she's fine, just another teen juvenile who only goes to school to keep out of trouble, but is not adverse to buying illegal cigarettes from a deal on the "street." Her smoking sets off a chain of events (done off camera) that directly affects the cast on the elevator mentioned later. On the way "up," they have to make an emergency stop on the detention level to pick up a couple of prisoners, who are on their way for execution. They are bad, sick thugs who scare the beejeezus out of everyone, and the lone security guard who is patrolling them doesn't reassure them. Sure enough, the elevator conks out (due to the cigarette left behind by the student, which ignites some fluids and causes a massive explosion, killing scores of people -- all off camera). The prisoners break free, kill the guard, and terrorize the passengers. Through the student's telepathy skills we find out the prisoners' pasts, and the attempted rape of the elevator lady sets her off, causing her to go a little nuts and she manages to kill one prisoner and the others defeat the other. Now this is where the Lifeboat stuff comes in. Lifeboat, the mid 40's movie by Hitchcock, is essentially a one set piece where the survivors of a shipwreck try to deal with one another as they try to stay alive, waiting for rescue. Hellevator is also a one set piece, all taking place in an elevator, and we find out that all of the passengers are not what they seem - the businessman, who kills the other prisoner when he comes to, tries to bribe the others saying that he didn't kill him, or he will lose his job -- but really he is a terrorist, carrying a deadly biological agent. The slacker kid is a secret agent intent on stopping him -- he also has some telepathy skills. And the mother is not really a mother at all. OK, so there are a few left curves thrown in, but it's handled well, as it gives an insight into this future world, its people and culture, than being about CGI effects. Kind of like a mixture of old school talky sci fi from the late 50's early 60's with contemporary Japanese action. However it does get confusing at the end, because the whole story is told in flashbacks, as the secret agent is talking to some military official as to what happened, which was different than how we saw it, which was through the student's eyes. So the girl is sent for execution, which is being sent to the top floor, unchained, and released into the surface world, which looks like a post apocalype landscape, until the camera turns up and a modern city appears. Huh? Despite the ending, it's a dvd worth seeing for the ideas and 3/4 of the plot. Better than your average slash em up.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Hellevator - an unusual sci fi thriller
Despite its lurid and silly title, evoking the pinhead guys from the Hellraiser series, or something worse, this is a surprisingly decent little movie that combines elements from Cube, THX-1138, and Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat. Bet the last one threw you there. It is the future, and everyone is living underground, due to who knows what disaster happened on the surface. Transportation is done through tunnels, and a series of elevators that span the city, going up and down at least several hundred floors. Everything is sectioned off by floors; the women who "run" the elevators, like the elevator ladies from department stores of old, are dressed sharply and politely sound off the destination points of each floor that the passengers take. This is pretty smart - they control the elevators like a train operator, manning a series of controls, and even using an "express" option once they passed a certain floor. Travelling on this particular elevator is a teenage student on her way to school, along with a mother and her child in a carriage, a businessman, and a slacker young man plugged into his headset. Apparently in this world some of the people possess telepathic skills, and the female student can tap into anyone's minds. This might explain her unstable past, as she murdered her father in a fit of rage, and sent to a mental institute for rehabilitation. But in the beginning of the movie she's fine, just another teen juvenile who only goes to school to keep out of trouble, but is not adverse to buying illegal cigarettes from a deal on the "street." Her smoking sets off a chain of events (done off camera) that directly affects the cast on the elevator mentioned later. On the way "up," they have to make an emergency stop on the detention level to pick up a couple of prisoners, who are on their way for execution. They are bad, sick thugs who scare the beejeezus out of everyone, and the lone security guard who is patrolling them doesn't reassure them. Sure enough, the elevator conks out (due to the cigarette left behind by the student, which ignites some fluids and causes a massive explosion, killing scores of people -- all off camera). The prisoners break free, kill the guard, and terrorize the passengers. Through the student's telepathy skills we find out the prisoners' pasts, and the attempted rape of the elevator lady sets her off, causing her to go a little nuts and she manages to kill one prisoner and the others defeat the other. Now this is where the Lifeboat stuff comes in. Lifeboat, the mid 40's movie by Hitchcock, is essentially a one set piece where the survivors of a shipwreck try to deal with one another as they try to stay alive, waiting for rescue. Hellevator is also a one set piece, all taking place in an elevator, and we find out that all of the passengers are not what they seem - the businessman, who kills the other prisoner when he comes to, tries to bribe the others saying that he didn't kill him, or he will lose his job -- but really he is a terrorist, carrying a deadly biological agent. The slacker kid is a secret agent intent on stopping him -- he also has some telepathy skills. And the mother is not really a mother at all. OK, so there are a few left curves thrown in, but it's handled well, as it gives an insight into this future world, its people and culture, than being about CGI effects. Kind of like a mixture of old school talky sci fi from the late 50's early 60's with contemporary Japanese action. However it does get confusing at the end, because the whole story is told in flashbacks, as the secret agent is talking to some military official as to what happened, which was different than how we saw it, which was through the student's eyes. So the girl is sent for execution, which is being sent to the top floor, unchained, and released into the surface world, which looks like a post apocalype landscape, until the camera turns up and a modern city appears. Huh? Despite the ending, it's a dvd worth seeing for the ideas and 3/4 of the plot. Better than your average slash em up.
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