Down

It’s Valentine’s Day, everybody! Well, not really, but I get to relive whatever holiday happens to be the latest in my adventure through this Hulu series, Into the Dark. This month I am watching the February film, Down. I’ve seen a surprising number of Valentine’s Day horror movies, and one horror film that takes place entirely in an elevator like tonight’s feature, so I wasn’t expecting anything innovative, but I was still looking forward to something fun! 

First, an anecdote: when I was a kid, my dad and I went to Target every Saturday to get groceries and things. Our Target is built into the side of a hill, and only has an up-escalator, so to get back to our car we had to take the elevator. Everyone did. One day, while my dad and I were the only ones on the elevator, he suggested to me that I should film a movie that takes place only in an elevator. I made short horror movies all the time as a kid, and I loved this idea. We talked about it for years. When M. Night’s Devil came out in 2010, we couldn’t believe it – it was our idea from years before! The personal connection to elevator movies (weird sub-genre, I know) left me with a predisposition to enjoy this film. I really hoped I would!

Down begins with an unnamed woman (played by Natalie Martinez of Death Race and End of Watch) typing an email to her ex-boyfriend about taking a plane to New York and meeting up that night. We then see an unnamed man (played by Matt Lauria of Kingdom and Friday Night Lights) washing his hands in a public bathroom. He’s carrying a bottle of wine with a little bow on it. They’re obviously trying to make us care about these two from the start, so I assume these are our main characters.

Nice filming. Beautiful shots. I don’t get that indie-film feel like I got with some of the other movies in this series. There are some nice shots of the main characters in the same building through security cameras before they meet one another. This was a really creative way of showing both of our main characters at one time. The lady gets in the lift, the man sees something he’s excited about on his phone and then ends up in there as well. This is where I assume they’ll spend the remainder of the movie.

While they are in there, they make some small talk, and the Man jokes about the etching someone has carved into the wall of the lift. When the camera closes in on it and you see it’s a stick figure person that is trying to get out of the elevator…that was actually something I wasn’t expecting. I knew it was a movie about people being stuck in a lift together, but I had assumed it was going to be an accident, not something that was reoccurring. Maybe the elevator is sentient and it just eats people every so often. 

When the audience sees the main characters through the security camera again, then we know someone is definitely watching them through that camera. Not even ten minutes in and it’s already headed in a different direction than I thought. Is there a person in the control room just trapping people for fun? Already, this movie was making me think about what could really be happening. Props for keeping me interested.

After they start talking to one another, we learn their names are Jennifer and Guyman or ‘Guy’, which is handy because I was calling him ‘Man’ anyway, and those are similar. The story started out so well, dropping hints all over the place to what was really going on, and then they spend ten minutes focusing on relationship building between the two characters. They try everything to get out, shout for help, break through the ceiling…nothing works. 

One thing I will say is that I actually like both of these people. I have a tendency to think most protagonists are annoying, but Guy is funny, and Jen curses a lot and hates everything and I relate to both of them. They share a bottle of wine and they get over the awkwardness of peeing in front of one another. I wrote a lot of notes about the two characters here, but many of them are spoilers, so I will say this: the pleasantries that they exchange end up being important because of the things they talk about. One of them seems to have too much knowledge of the building and the other person. One of them seems to be forthcoming about their life, while the other is a little too secretive. It might seem like niceties on the surface, but it definitely hints to a twist.

It is definitively established that neither one of them have anyone waiting for them, which seemed like a very important detail, because now both of them can go missing for a long time without the audience wondering why no one has come looking for them. 

My complaint at the twenty-six-minute mark is that nothing scary or stressful has happened at all. They have been in the elevator for hours at this point and they are both giggly and happy and basically just on a date. Some of the things they’ve said to one another did get awkward, and my compliments to the actors for being able to change a scene from happy-go-lucky to oddly stressful just with a facial expression. Being stuck in a lift, they only have their ability to deliver dialogue that dictate the emotion of the scenes. They do a great job.

It is because of their acting skills that the plot twist in Down is so effective. Long before the big reveal, the audience is aware that something is wrong. It’s felt in the elevator before it’s physically seen by anyone in the movie or in the audience. However, it took a long time to get to this twist, and somehow the twist has still come too early. About forty-five minutes in and we hit a patch of action that lasts five minutes or so. It is the most action we’ve seen in the film…and then the whole tone of Down changes.

At first, I was afraid that there wouldn’t be much to entertain me after the ‘big reveal’ in the middle of Down, but they actually did a nice job of introducing new events that made for an entertaining plot. Down kind of evolved from the initial plot into a whole other movie. The writers did a nice job of keeping the plot revolving around the elevator adventure without letting it get boring. It escalates again and again right up until the last few minutes of the movie. 

Overall, decent film. My only personal complaint is that I liked where I thought Down was going over where it truly went. I was picking up on hints that were not hints at all or were hinting to something entirely different. There’s no real issue here, except that the story itself was a little slow. The actors did a nice job of carrying the tone and every detail of this movie in their mannerisms and expressions. They carried the dialogue nicely, but, as I said, this seems like the type of movie where I wouldn’t relate to the characters and that would ruin it for me. That didn’t happen. 

After watching five of these movies, I’m starting to get the idea that ‘horror’ may not be the correct genre to apply to many of them. ‘Psychological thriller’ seems closer, but even then, it doesn’t seem like an appropriate descriptor. I am determined to figure out what these could be called by the time I finish all twelve. 

Join me next time for a scary adventure into…Mardi Gras? St. Patrick’s Day? International Women’s Day? Who knows! We’ll definitely find out when we watch the next installment of Into the Dark!

Rating:

Fool on the Hill:

Down was okay, but I wouldn’t really say that I liked it. I thought it was well made and the actors involved did a fantastic job, but it wasn’t the type of horror film I like. I thought it was a little slow, a little boring, but I can see how fans of that subset of horror would enjoy it (no, I don’t mean elevator horror). After the first half an hour, there was plenty of action, lots of violence, lots of blood, and a few good surprises.

Jack Savage:

Down feels like someone had a concept for a thirty-minute story and put in a lot of filler to hit an hour and a half. The second half of this film just isn’t worth sitting through the first. Also, it’s tie to Valentine’s Day is strenuous at best.

Trailer: