Every time I get into an elevator I wonder if this will be the time I get trapped inside. I especially wonder this when I am on elevator and have to make number two very badly. Or when I have just bought my lunch and know that the other bastards in the elevator will demand to have some if we are stuck for any length of time.
So believe me when I tell you that I understand the basic terror of being trapped in an elevator. Which makes the premise of Amber (The Grudge 2) Tamblyn’s next movie, Blackout, work for me right off the bat. At least until I read about the other characters.
In Blackout Tamblyn is trapped in a hospital elevator for 24 hours with two other people. Tamblyn herself is trying to get to her dying grandmother. Armie Hammer (is his best friend Proctor Gamble?) plays a teen who wants to run away with his girlfriend. And here comes the stupid: The Wire’s Aiden Gillen is a doctor… who just happens to be a psycho killer! I hope he chases Tamblyn around the elevator with a butcher knife in a throwback to those old Flintstones cartoons where they would just run in front of the same background again and again.
Too bad they didn’t keep this simple – a No Exit story mixed with a thriller with people trapped in an elevator could be fascinating, and I think after the horror stories of Katrina we’re ready for complete social breakdown in no time flat. But seriously, it would have been terrifying enough if Tamblyn had just been stuck in an elevator with a close talker.