Don't look down, the first step's a doozy - aka - Do yourself a favor...take the stairs: a review of "The Shaft" aka "Down"

The Shaft - aka - Down    (2001)

     Don't look down, the first step's a doozy - aka - Do yourself a favor...take the stairs.

Director: Dick Maas.

Starring:  Dan Hedaya, Edward Herman, Michael Ironside, James Marshall, Ron Perlman, Eric Thal, Naomi Watts.

     The elevators in one of New York city's most popular business and tourist attraction skyscrapers begin to kill people.  It takes a "goof off but great in a crisis" (is there any other kind of goof off in movies?) elevator repair man (Marshall) and a spunky female reporter (is there any other kind of female reporter in movies?) (Watts) to prove that the cause is something other than faulty circuits or sabotage and more along the lines of thinking, man made evil.

     This is a slow moving film with stock characters, average performances from the leads, and some good actors (Herman, Ironside, Perlman) in small roles.  It's a B- TV quality movie.  Don't mind mindless horror movies and home sick from work?  That's the kind of time to watch this film.  The spookiest thing about this movie is that it mentions terrorism, Osama Bin Laden, the 1993 attack on the Towers, and came out about five days before September 11, 2001.  That kind of creepy can't be written. 

     Rent when you're home sick.

     First published in 2004 on The Perlman Pages.