The Shaft |  | Director: Dick Maas
Actors: James Marshall, Naomi Watts, Eric Thal, Michael Ironside, Edward Herrmann
Studio: Lions Gate
Category: DVD
List Price: $9.98
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Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 73544
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 111 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: D14112D
UPC: 012236141129
EAN: 0012236141129
ASIN: B00008RUYS
Theatrical Release Date: 2001
Release Date: May 20, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
Naomi Watts had not yet been put through the paces with David Lynch or The Ring when she made this 2001 thriller about an elevator with a malevolent spirit. It's essentially an English-language revamp, by the Dutch director Dick Maas, of his very fun 1983 movie The Lift. Set in pre-9/11 New York, in a fictional 102-floor high-rise, it's yet another lesson in why man should never tamper with combining computer chips and human tissue. Unfortunately, this lesson is pretty dull, cramped by stilted dialogue and a plodding pace. There's one great action sequence with an elevator car racing upward as its floor drops out, and Dan Hedaya, Ron Perlman, and Michael Ironside lend their indelible mugs for some character-actor juice. Watts provides a bit of playfulness, but it would take Mulholland Drive to unlock the more compelling part of her personality. The Shaft finds her still on the ground floor. --Robert Horton
Product Description
No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: UN
Release Date: 21-OCT-2003
Media Type: DVD
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
 Laughably stupid, but (barely) watchable nonetheless. October 10, 2008
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
The Shaft (Dick Maas, 2001)
The Shaft, also known as Down, is one of those incredible train wrecks that makes you wonder how so very many recognizable people found themselves attached to such a godawful movie. Dutch director Maas (probably best known on this side of the pond for Amsterdamned) revisits his own De Lift (1983), but with a much more ambitious scope and an American setting.
The plot: Mark Newman (Twin Peaks' criminally underutilized James Marshall), an elevator repairman, begins to suspect something's hinky, when the elevators in New York's Millennium Building start acting weird. Accompanied by perky reporter Jennifer Evans (Ring's Naomi Watts), he has to figure out what's going on. Yeah, that's pretty much it, with most of the movie dedicated to the elevator's antics, goin' 'round killin' anyone who gets in its path, and a few others just for fun.
But what's really crazy about this movie is the cast. Watts would be nominated for an academy award two years later for 21 Grams, and won the AFI Best Actress award the same year this came out for Mulholland Dr.. Marshall's partner is played by Eric Thal (Snow Falling on Cedars). His boss is Ron Perlman (Hellboy, and a Golden Globe winner for his TV work in Beauty and the Beast). The bad guy is played by Michael Ironside (Scanners). Dan Hedaya, who also showed up in Mulholland Dr., is the lieutenant the police assign to the case. This is not a trivial cast by any means. And somehow Maas manages, Uwe Boll-like, to pull the worst possible performance out of each of these characters. Perlman comes off ham-handed, Watts ineffective. And Ironside? This is the guy who played Daryl Revok? Oh, how the mighty have fallen-- at least for this one flick.
Amusing, in a horrifying sort of way. But avoid unless you have absolutely nothing else to do. * ½
 Corny, silly, cheesy and a whole lot of fun July 9, 2008
JLind555
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
"The Shaft" is one of those guilty pleasures you feel somewhat abashed at liking. I even feel embarrassed at giving this movie four stars. The plot is off the wall, some of the acting sucks like a Hoover vac, and the whole thing comes off like a bad C movie. But I gotta admit -- it's a helluva lot of fun to watch.
So here we are in New York City in the Millenium Building, 102 stories high, just like the Empire State Building which it may or may not be representing. There's a big bank of elevators servicing the building. Some of them, for some weird reason, seem to have developed a mind of their own and start acting out in all kinds of crazy, nasty, and just plain lethal ways.
One elevator suddenly turns into a sauna, trapping a dozen women in the end stages of pregnancy who have just left their Lamaze class and causing them to go into labor and give birth right there on the floor. Another elevator door opens into an empty shaft, down which plunges a blind man and his dog. A third elevator sucks in a skateboarder like a pneumatic tube, shoot him 86 stories up like a rocket taking off, and propels him out through the nearest window 86 floors down, leaving the poor guy splashed like an overripe melon all over the sidewalk. Yuck. Another elevator full of passengers zooms up the shaft while the floor drops out, dumping everybody to their deaths below before it finally zooms through the roof. A security guard is decapitated and a cop is cut in half. These elevators aren't kidding around.
A repairman, somewhat woodenly played by James Marshall, can't find a thing wrong with them but something's evidently out of wack with all these elevators doing their own thing and making all kinds of mayhem. An ambitious newspaper reporter (doesn't every horror movie have to have one of those?), played by Naomi Watts, thinks Somebody is hiding Something and goes off to investigate. Of course she's right. Turns out a mad scientist (another stock character) has been experimenting with bio-chips and planted them in the elevator shaft. You can figure the rest out for yourself.
There's a supporting cast that includes Michael Ironside as Dr. Demento and Ron Perlman as the guy who hired him and lived to regret it, and the cast give adequate performances for the most part, but the stars of this film, of course, are those crazy-creepy elevators. There's also a great scene with two teenagers in a breath-taking skateboarding race through the streets of midtown Manhattan into the garage of the Millenium Building, from which one emerges shouting "Beat ya!" and the other emerges shot like a cannonball from the elevator screaming bloody murder. Don't even think of taking this movie seriously. Just accept it for the cheesy camp it is and enjoy the ride.
Judy Lind
 The Shaft -- as in giving us the . . . July 7, 2008
H. Sansom (Brooklyn, NY USA)
Remember that scene in Big where Tom Hanks is in a meeting at his new job, playing with the transformer building -- the building that turns into a robot?
This movie is as dopey as that building-bot. Bad acting, and one of the worst plot devices ever. Wow. It doesn't get much worse than this. An artificially intelligent elevator turned evil -- pure concentrated evil!
Actually, there was an X Files episode along these lines that got it right, but this doesn't. Some cool actors in an abysmal movie. No camp, no suspense, and pointless gore.
 No, it doesn't give you the shaft April 18, 2008
Bud Bundy (MN USA)
So the Millennium building in NYC has a killer elevator. Why is it killing people you ask? An elevator repairman and a newspaper reporter(Naomi Watts) are hot on the case. And hot definitely describes Naomi Watts. I got a real kick out of these two. They're very entertaining, and there's some fun elevator kills to boot.
Yes this movie is cheesy. If you're expecting something like The Exorcist or Alien, you might want to check the cover of the DVD box - it's a killer elevator movie for chrissakes. If you're in the mood for a cheesy good time, you'll probably enjoy the heck out of it. I know I did. And yes, they did figure out a way to fit Aerosmith's Love in an Elevator into the perfect closing credits scene.
The Shaft is a Cheesy Weak Movie - Good In That Mystery Science Theatre 3000 sort of way. July 8, 2007
1 WOLF CITY PLAZA (Baltimore, Maryland USA)
I am Autistic and one of my favorite things to watch is and has always been Elevators. This was a no brainer must Buy for me but I am really quite weird and loving it. I must say even through I LOVE Elevators this movie looks so corny. The set's All Look as if they were dressed up bunkers. The Movie looks as if were filmed mostly in the Fall Out Shelter of a really Old School in California. I say looks like the filming was in California only because the concrete beams in this high rise building looked like those gigantic earthquake refinforced things you see in L.A.
The building was done up in all shades of that super institutional olive drab prison green that just sucks the life out of everything living within 50 Miles. The acting was wooden the plot was transparent and the action was weaker than a 90 year old on full life support. The saving grace of this movie is it took itself seriously and in a really bad B horror movie that usually insures its funny as heck. The Shaft was funny the life form running the Elevator Looks like a discarded wad of Bubble gum glowing of course.
The cops and safety personal were your stereotyped gung-ho super man muscle heads whose collective IQ would not break 70 if you added 20 points. I gave the movie 4 stars only because, I like Elevators. I saw another reviewer say he was waiting for the sequel called The Escalator. I suggest this will likely be a Trilogy. The Final installment to be named "The Stairwell". You want a cheap laugh in a horror movie. You looking for that dumb cheap thing to buy to push your shipping to the $25 minimum for super saver shipping. Buy this. Its aweful yes but its also aweful funny in a MST 3000 sort of way.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
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