Elevated (film)

Elevated
Directed by	Vincenzo Natali
Produced by	Steve Hoban Vanessa C. Laufer
Written by	Vincenzo Natali Karen Walton
Starring	David Hewlett Vicki Papavs Bruce McFee
Cinematography	Derek Rogers
Edited by	Brett Sullivan
Release dates	1997 (1997)
Running time	20 minutes
Country	Canada
Language	English

Elevated is a 1997 Canadian short film directed by Vincenzo Natali^[1] and co-written by him and Karen Walton, who also participated in the writing of Ginger Snaps.

Plot

A woman, Ellen, takes the elevator from her workplace on floor 38, and presses the button to head for the parking garage. A burly workman named Ben gets on several floors below. His silent behavior creeps out Ellen, who intently stares at the lift display hoping for the ride to end. At floor 4, the lift opens but both find nobody outside. As the elevator is about to close, a man shouts for them to let him in and Ellen manages to press the button in time to allow him into the elevator. The panic-stricken man, whose name is Hank, is a security guard in the building. He desperately uses his security card to override the controls and take the elevator back up. Ellen and Ben protest at what Hank is doing but are stunned to see Hank's shirt covered in blood.

Visibly shaken, Hank quickly explains that something outside (which he claims looks like an alien) is killing people and was about to get him. Ben disbelieves the guard's story and attempts to send the elevator back down but finds that he can't control it. Hank reveals he used the card and Ben angrily tries to grab it from him, but is repelled back when Hank takes out a spring-assisted knife to defend himself. Eventually, Ben restrains Hank while Ellen tries to call the lift telephone for help, to no avail. The elevator rocks and the lights go out, causing the three to stop. Ben reveals he has claustrophobia and uses Hank's knife to open the elevator panel and fiddle with the controls in order to operate the lift, but Hank stops him. Ben then tries to get the lift ceiling hatch open, but Hank stops him and tells him and Ellen that the monsters outside will get in and kill all of them. The lift becomes operational once again and Ellen manages to wrestle the card away from the men and use it to send the elevator down to the garage. Ben, desperate to be out of the lift, presses the button for floor 39.

As the trio watch, the elevator doors open but there is no sign of any monster/alien outside. Ben steps out and invites Ellen to join him in leaving the building via the stairs. Ellen initially accepts but becomes fearful of Ben when she sees Hank's knife in his pocket. She dashes right back in to the elevator before Ben can stop her. While the lift goes down, Hank presses the stop button to halt the elevator and Ellen becomes panicked, saying that she wants to go down. Before they can argue, someone attempts to open the lift hatch. Hank keeps the hatch shut while instructing Ellen to send the elevator to floor 44. This causes the thing outside to stop its attempt to enter, but dents the hatch. Before the two can react, they're startled by Ben's mutilated corpse which comes tumbling down into the elevator.

Ellen blames Hank for not allowing Ben to enter as she believes he was trying to rescue her. Hank unsuccessfully tries to calm her and the two struggle to gain possession of the security card. They accidentally push the card out the elevator via the hole between the door and the floor. Ellen then uses the knife to open the panel like Ben did earlier. Hank tries again to convince her it's much safer to stay in the lift, but Ellen accidentally stabs the knife into him when she swings it in anger. Stunned by what she has done, she takes the knife out of Hank, but then proceeds to murder him by stabbing him repeatedly. The elevator once again operates and goes to the parking garage.

When the doors open, Ellen drops her knife and faces the garage. She hears voices ahead telling her to hold the elevator open for them, and soon a large group of people run toward her direction shouting and screaming, fleeing from something behind them, implying that what Hank first told Ellen and Ben was true and monsters were indeed attacking. The people squeeze past a catatonic Ellen as the elevator doors close.

Cast

• David Hewlett as Hank
• Vicki Papavs as Ellen
• Bruce McFee as Ben

Release

"Elevated" is distributed by the Canadian Film Centre and is not available on home video, although some DVD releases of Cube feature it as an extra. ^[2]

Reception

Beyond Hollywood compared it to The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, calling it "a surprisingly accomplished piece of suspenseful fiction".^[3]

References

External links

• Elevated at the Internet Movie Database
• Elevated, at the Canadian Film Centre website.