“The Elevator Game” is a really creepy urban legend and one that works by virtue of word of mouth. I really wish we’d gotten a great horror movie out of it, because “Elevator Game” just isn’t it. It’s tough to imagine such a great urban legend being fumbled as bad as it is, but Rebekah McKendry doesn’t do much to add on to the lore. She instead opts for a painfully silly and boring horror film involving contorting ghosts, and what feel like obvious allusions to “Stranger Things” and “The Grudge.”
Based on the online phenomenon of the same name, ELEVATOR GAME follows socially awkward teenager Ryan, who ingratiates himself into a group that run an online web series debunking urban legends. But Ryan has a secret: His sister disappeared months earlier, and he believes they – and a dangerous online challenge called ‘The Elevator Game’ – were responsible. In an attempt to gain more information as to the whereabouts of his sister, Ryan persuades the group to play the game once more, and risk the consequences.
Again I remember reading about “The Elevator Game” years ago and feeling a sense of anxiety that came along with it. I’m not scared of elevators but I don’t love them. McKendry and writer Travis Seppala fail to tap in to the whole elevator anxiety and sense of unpredictability in favor of a very small scale and low stakes mystery. The movie’s budget is what hinders a lot of the narrative with the film reduced to a small cast, and then killing them off. To make things worse, the script lays down a set of rules for us and never actually sticks with them. Most of the supernatural incidents that occur are at the elevator, so you can sense their desperation in breaking their own rules to keep the narrative moving forward.
So rather than the elevator game invoking an evil spirit that stalks and murders you in the elevator car, or in its dimension, suddenly it can follow you home, and mess with your electronics, and even has the ability to murder you in a variety of gruesome ways. “The Elevator Game” begins in an okay note with a prologue that essentially sets up the whole concept, but once we actually get down to establishing characters and sub-plots, it falls apart minute by minute. There are story elements in the script involving alternate dimensions, and a vengeful spirit, and this building that houses ten floors but oddly enough no actual residents?
I was never sure why this building was always so deserted. In either case, “The Elevator Game” could have taken off as a great spooky tale about the supernatural and the unknown. It just falls apart at the seams thanks to stiff performances, boring characters and a downright unscary narrative.
Now Streaming on Shudder.