While horror remakes are inevitable, its rare that international filmmakers are hired to helm American remakes of their originals. Even fewer filmmakers get to make not one, but TWO movies about sentient killer elevators (Killovators? Murdervators?). Lucky for us, Dick Maas laughs in the face of convention. His feature debut, The Lift, is a zany 1980s concoction of A.I. paranoia and cable-attached monsters, kickstarting his career as an odd duckling who cherishes a proper B-Movie script. Movies like Amsterdamned, Prey (aka Uncaged), and Sint would further cement his audacious brand of metropolitan nightmares that treat midnight movie storylines with higher prestige, only adding to the Dutchman’s legacy.
Maas’ The Lift might seem like a strange choice for an American remake—a procedural thriller about corrupt elevator companies—but it’s hailed as one of the Netherlands’ premiere horror imports. Imagine an episode of The Twilight Zone with more sleaze: Maximum Overdrive for the blue-collar crowd. Maas’ movies take on a life of their own, so it’s no surprise that Warner Brothers quickly reached out about remake rights after The Lift’s release. He always intended to remake The Lift for American audiences, and boy howdy did he double down for his second treatment with 2001’s Cannes-premiering Down (which Artisan Entertainment released as The Shaft on DVD).
The Approach
‘The Lift’
Maas follows in the footsteps of other horror filmmakers who remade their own original works, like Michael Haneke (Funny Games), Takashi Shimizu (The Grudge), and Dean Alioto (Abduction: Incident in Lake County). Alioto turned his no-budget abduction flick into a UPN special that aired incognito like the radio play War of the Worlds; Haneke and Shimizu translated their Austrian and Japanese films into American versions. Maas’ approach — compared to Funny Games, which is almost a beat-for-beat recreation — sees the second chance as a means to grow bolder and grander. Everything gets upgraded: the number of floors his elevator can ride, the body count, and the film’s overall brutality. It’s almost like Maas viewed Down as a challenge to outdo himself around every turn, determined to repeat as little as possible.
The 2001 update follows slacker Mark Newman (James Marshall), a fresh-faced METEOR elevator company employee. He’s partnered with his buddy Jeffrey McClellan (Eric Thal), the kind soul who secured him the much-needed salary gig. At the movie’s start, they’re called to investigate the 102-floor, 73-elevator Millennium Building after lightning strikes and causes three express elevators to fritz, nearly cooking a car full of perspiring pregnant women alive. After their investigation, Jeff reassures Millennium’s manager, Matthew Milligan (Edward Herrmann), that METEOR’s computer systems are working fine and there’s no trace of malfunction. Matthew breathes a sigh of relief and reinstates the elevators, but incidents involving the elevators keep happening. Mark, now suspicious of METEOR and his partner Jeff, starts working with Morning Post reporter Jennifer Evans (Naomi Watts) to uncover the truth — a truth involving German scientists, corporate cover-ups, and the President of the United States.
Comparing The Lift to Down is like putting Bud Lite and Bud Ice side-by-side. Down is a more potent brand of B-movie sensibilities like Maas’ already pulpy-ambitious-snickery style after railing a few lines of cocaine. The Lift stays confined inside a smaller building; Deta Liften elevator technician Felix Adelaar (Huub Stapel) only has to contend with a few interlopers and minimal obstacles as he tries to defeat his goopy biochiped foe. Down imagines, “What if The Lift, but in the Empire State Building?” Maas holds nothing back — rollerbladers are spat off stories-high observation decks by elevators, the White House declares terrorist threats, children plummet to their deaths, so on and so forth. What exists in The Lift lays a groundwork for Down, but it’s never the ceiling — everything is multiplied times ten or twenty.
Does It Work?
‘The Shaft’
Down feels like the movie Maas might have wanted The Lift to be, but required more resources. Because he’s at the helm, the original’s pseudo-serious tone stays consistent, and embellishments play like organic evolutions. Maas’ filmmaking style stays canonical for better and worse, leaning into unbelievable indulgences with sky-high hopes. The Lift vs. Down feels very Rollerball (1975) vs. Rollerball (2002) in how Maas embraces the cinematic Wild West that is the late 1990s and early 2000s. The difference is that Maas thrives under conditions that allow Down to turn from The Lift into a military siege flick that’s also an ultra-violet science fiction satire at the same time. In a very Torque or Rollerball (2002) way, nonsense is at an all-time high — but Maas is the kind of childish madman who belongs in a 2000s sandbox playing with rocket launchers and severed heads.
Maas doesn’t ditch everything from The Lift because why jettison what already works? Highlight moments like a security guard’s snail’s pace, torturous decapitation or a battered corpse falling through the elevator’s ceiling are recycled, since Maas wants to include nods for fans who’ve championed the original. It’s faithful down to the mannerisms of doofy sidekicks who back-peddle like a Looney Tunes character, horrified by their partner’s execution, or the number of blood drips on an upper-class elevator rider’s fitted jacket. A good remake still honors the original, and Maas doesn’t ignore how without The Lift, there’d be no Down. He’s adamant about making Down a unique, singular experience — but never forgets the remake’s roots.
Mass dials the story a couple notches past eleven outside these nostalgic callbacks. The Lift depicts the elevators as devious goons at times, whereas Down accentuates their viciousness. The scene where a crammed elevator car full of tourist families, soda-slurping cubicle schlubs, and random pedestrians are thrown down an express shaft when the floor peels open like a flimsy tuna can lid has bodies slamming against steel support beams with no remorse — The Lift never gets close to that level of deadly spectacle. Maas brings “mas” violence, embracing the morbid absurdity of Down that’s present but subdued in The Lift. Even the original film’s fantastic smash cut from sweat-soaked elevator takers to a toy ambulance is redone with such a harder push, as the pregnant women who are nearly cooked alive by sauna temperatures reach the lobby, the doors open, and then WHAM — Maas cuts to a diner grill covered with sizzling Sunny Side Up eggs.
The Result
‘The Shaft’
I understand why Haneke remade Funny Games without any switch-ups — but I give Maas more credit for using his remake as an excuse to renovate what exists. Maas ensures The Lift will always be remembered for its eerily contained atmosphere, while Down mutates into a busier, more explosive, even more tongue-in-cheek take on fever-dream procedural horrors. Some might argue that the expanded scope hinders the narrative structure, failing to mimic Adelaar’s noose-tight sleuthing. Still, I’d insist Down better embraces the underlying hilarity of The Lift. I mean, the production secured rights to use Aerosmith’s “Love In An Elevator” as the end-credits song — Maas isn’t taking himself even a fraction as seriously.
The way Down spirals out of control is ridiculous even by Snakes on a Plane or The Happening standards. There’s still the element of playing god with biologically-enhanced microchips, but it becomes a national disaster versus an under-wraps experiment in The Lift. Once POTUS gets involved, declaring an entire military takeover of the Millennium building in response to a perceived terrorist attack on New York City, Mark has to go “Reverse Die Hard” to destroy the now Kaiju-size beating heart of the elevators. Explaining the plot advancement of Down to non-horror fans might be grounds for an asylum stint, but it’s a shining example of how remakes can and should be so much more than generic copy and pasting.
A stacked cast of character actors somehow holds the batty-as-all-hell conceit together, from Michael Ironside as a disgraced scientist and the film’s Dr. Frankenstein (Elevatorstein?) Gunter Steinberg to Ron Perlman as METEOR’s corrupt figurehead Adrian Mitchell. Dan Hedaya is who you want to play the cigar-chomping police lieutenant with an intense grudge against elevators — same for Edward Herrmann as the money-hungry tycoon who will stop at nothing to keep his elevators open and patrons spending happily. It’s a perfectly loopy cast down to four-time horror remake star Naomi Watts as the stereotypic go-getter reporter who trespasses in disguise as anyone from a janitor to a female elevator technician. James Marshall and Eric Thal might be the least known of the cast, but that’s honestly for the better. It’s easier to focus on the obscene entertainment value on display, even with soapy dramatic moments unfold with the subtlety of a primetime Telenovela.
The Lesson
‘The Shaft’
When it comes to international remakes, the original filmmakers should — in my opinion — always be offered the chance to direct if possible. We’re not talking about an American remake of an American movie that benefits from another filmmaker’s revisions. Foreign remakes typically erase subtitles and introduce a film anew to stateside audiences. Maas’ return as director ensures that Down retains the signature tonality, tact, and vision of The Lift as consistent with a singular filmmaker’s voice — as pure a remake’s representation of prior works can exist. Not only that, but Maas is allowed to show us the version of The Lift he thinks will best suit our American theaters, which makes Down a commentary on his perception of American cinema. When viewed as an outsider’s take on Hollywood around the 2000s, Down becomes an even more attractive examination.
So what did we learn?
- Any remake that makes the jump to American theaters would benefit from having the original creators not only involved, but in charge.
- Remakes offer the chance to build upon originals; the best remakes don’t waste that opportunity.
- No idea is too [insert descriptor] to remake.
- Maas isn’t afraid to let his freak flag fly and goes even harder into his cynicism, whether that be bastard characters or conspiracy theories.
If Down is B-Movie trash, I’m the raccoon in the dumpster happily feasting on its leftovers. Maas might give in to his baser instincts, whether that’s overdone misogynist dialogue thrown Watts’ way, characters reshaped into gropy perverts (David Gwillim’s blind Mr. Faith), but it’s all within what’s supposed to be an alternate America run by capitalism and assholes. What’s even harder to ignore is the film’s “terrorism in New York City” storyline with shots of the original World Trade Center, which played Cannes only a few months before 9/11.
The film wouldn’t be released on DVD until May 20th, 2003, with the aforementioned name change to The Shaft for reasons most likely tied to the terrorism angle. Maas had everything working against him regarding his remake’s release, but as far as wacky genre flicks go, Down deserves its rediscovery period.