Hellevator

By the name of its title Hellevator, you get a rough idea that the premise of the movie is set primarily in a lift. This sci-fi thriller is set in a world which is split into functions and assigned different levels, like hospitals, prison and offices.

We follow the protagonist, a schoolgirl with apparent psychic abilities, as she escapes from the police for a smoking crime (cigarettes are illegal). While in the lift (which serves at least 130 levels), we are shown a subset of the world and its occupants, like the uniformed salaried workers, and the job scope of a very robotic like lift attendant. All nice and simple so far, and interesting too.

However, things start to change when 2 criminals - a serial rapist cum cannibal, and a bomber, are escorted by a sadistic prison warden at Level 99 en route to Level 1. When the lift stalls, and the criminals break loose, the occupants, which consist of the psychic schoolgirl, the lift attendant, a businessman, a mother with a pram and an indifferent teenager, start to fear for their lives.

We start to explore the world of the occupants through the abilities of our psychic schoolgirl, and realize that things are not what they seem. The occupants start to tangent from our preconceived notions of their characters, and this is coupled by the fact that blood and gore start to fill the screen - shooting, bludgeoning, splattering, disemboweling.

Just as you think you have the whole storyline figured out, especially if you think the closure is like your usual Hollywood-like tying of loose ends, when the rug finally gets pulled from under your feet, you're back in thinking mode again, wondering about what was real, what was imagined, and what actually happened.

There's only one screening at the Fantastic Film Fest, so if you're interested in trying your hand at interpreting this film, you gotta go the DVD route.