There are many aspects that make Elevator a film worth watching: the great editing and directing skills of self-made director, George Dorobantu (who is a boat captain), the excellent quality of a film that was shot in a theatre cargo elevator on an amazing budget of only 200 euro, as well as the impressive acting skills of two teenagers selected directly from high school. Above all, it's the sheer emotions engendered by the story of two young people who, looking to escape the ordinariness of their city life, seek a romantic moment in the cargo elevator of an abandoned factory. Instead of a hot romance, they find themselves trapped in the elevator facing their own death by thirst and starvation. The film carefully chronicles their gradual demise, beginning with their conversations about a non-existent future and ending with visceral shots of their physical agony. Given the brutality of the situation, the film's audience can only be grateful that the director did not choose to become overly naturalistic in its shots. Instead, his filming becomes increasingly stylised as the drama draws to a predictable close. The heightening desperation acquires a poetic quality as the screams become drowned in a beautiful and haunting soundtrack by Ada Milea. The physical suffering is compensated by increasing moments of tenderness between the two condemned teenagers. Perhaps the most original and intriguing touch comes at the end, when the film does not conclude, as we might expect, with the death scenes, but with a cute and upbeat conversation between the two, which is carried out in a surreal dimension of shared delirium. The ending is in an understated way a testimony of love trumping death as the two doomed youth become a postmodernist version of Romeo and Juliet.
One more thing: the film's premise becomes much more powerful by the fact that it is inspired from real events that happened in London, where two unidentified teenagers were found dead after three months in an abandoned elevator.
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