Early on in Elevator Game, a character says their YouTube fans will not think a twenty minute video set in an elevator would be very interesting. Please tell me the cast and crew were self aware…

Elevator Game posits an urban legend where if you got an elevator and push buttons to different floors in a specific sequence, Bloody Mary’s angrier sister will show up and murder you. So a bunch of YouTubers decide to film it… and you can’t begin to imagine the awe and horror of watching a bunch of pretty Hollywood actors ride an elevator six or seven times in a movie. Dracula get back, Dr. Lecter go home, you’re drunk, that guy in Seven? Please.

No, The 5th Floor Lady is no Samara… hell, the 5th Floor Lady isn’t even The Bye Bye Man. But she does have one thing those other spooks don’t have: a lot of anger. Mainly because if you were a supernatural haunt and you had to obey the rules of this arbitrary game and get on and off of elevators each time a brain-dead YouTuber hit buttons in a certain order, you’d be pretty pissed off too.

Now, there’s part of me that kind of admires the concept of hacking reality by pushing buttons on an elevator. It has the rancid stank of the Hellraiser puzzle box… only with more moving parts. But it doesn’t exactly make a thrilling movie scene.

Indeed… after the second time we go through watching these bibbling idiots hit elevator button, I realized we were going to have to sit through this malarkey at least one more time… and likely even more (which was the case).

But don’t despair because sometime the evil elevator ghost breaks the nebulous rules and comes for you elsewhere. Because why not set up hard and fast rules in your movie and immediately break them (by repeating a death from the most recent season of Stranger Things, I might add)?

The final act of the film does get better though. Now that starts with an arbitrary dice roll that turns one of the actors into sudden comic relief. It’s kind of amusing but not very cohesive. And then we get an explanation of the ghost which isn’t bad and the (sigh) final elevator ride which is actually kind of suspenseful. It’s enough to raise the score to the 1st floor from the sub-basement.

<RANDOM ASIDE>Speaking of ground floor though, as an elevator ghost, how do the rules apply in countries where the 1st floor is America’s second floor (we call the ground floor the first floor but other countries just call it the ground floor and our second floor is their first floor)? Do the rules adjust accordingly or is this more of an elevation thing?</RANDOM ASIDE>

This is a pretty bad film that relies on a gimmick that simply isn’t photogenic or suspenseful enough. Unless, I suppose, you have a deep phobia of elevators. But any horror movie that relies on proximity to a tall enough building that has an elevator that isn’t in active use has a practicality problem. This isn’t Bloody Mary or Candyman where any sap can walk into a bathroom and turn off the lights. This takes way too much effort to make your spine tingle once out of the theater.

Anyhow, this flick is pretty bad but not as bad as it felt like it was going to be from jump. It gets better but it never gets good enough to remotely recommend.

And certainly bad enough to not justify a review this long. What is wrong with me?

Score: 66