ctomvelu1 A woman is taking an elevator to her parking garage. A burly workman joins her, and shortly thereafter a second man enters the elevator, only this guy is covered in blood and in a state of panic. He claims monsters or possibly aliens have invaded the building and they must remain in the elevator to stay alive. Pretty soon, it becomes a battle of wits among the trio. David Hewlett, a familiar face from British and American movies and TV, plays the bloodied man. This short horror film is tense and scary, and a model for no-budget flicks. From the man who brought us CUBE. Warning: this is not a film for the squeamish. I haven't seen this much blood since I worked in a hospital emergency room on Saturday nights.

Tom Millan This film shows, in a crystal clear sense of purity, that you don't need a lot of money to make a good film. The talent behind the acting, directing and writing are the valuable keys in making a good film. "Elevated" has an excellent execution of that talent which, in some scenes and visuals, remind me of a couple of my films- "Blue Window" and "One Named Clarence". Suspense and chaos run amok in this film as we have the actors fight against the odds in an elevator that is up to no good. Paranoid thoughts ring true to this movie which gets the viewer wondering as to what is going on. The editing on top of the directing is well done. The lighting is well executed and the acting is visceral and well played. Like some of my films, it has unpredictable twists and turns including one bizarre ending. I thought the one scene near the end, which contained all of these silhouetted figures run towards the elevator in slow motion was quite an interesting scene- a cool scene and again quite similar to my style of film making. I saw this film in 1998 on Showcase with my room mate. This film was on a series that documented short films. He, a writer, thought that this movie was a good view as well.

Sky-35 After watching the excellent movie, Cube, I decided to research about the director, Vincenzo Natali. I found out about the short film "Elevated." I watched it on the Independent Film Channel late one night and found many similarities to Cube. It starts out with two people in an elevator. They're interrupted by a blood-covered man entering the elevator claiming that there is an "Alien-like" monster outside of the elevator and he insists that they should go up, to the top floor. It has the same creepiness and originality as Cube, which makes it an excellent 25 minutes. I do wish that the director would have made it into a long movie, making the 25 minutes the beginning and then the rest of the movie about the monster and the other people in the building. But then again, having it stay a short film leaves a lot to the imagination, which I cannot say is true about a lot of other movies these days. I give it ***1/2 out of ****

Puke Bag Having seen this short in a film class, it is one of the better shorts that I've seen in quite some time. Blending dark comedy, horror, and suspense, it plays it all up to exhilarating effect. Definitely a worthy calling card, especially considering that it was shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm (looks very, very slick).