Elevator Game is proof that not every creepypasta needs a movie, and certainly not one that feels like it was generated by an algorithm trained on “Netflix horror thumbnails” and the words based on an online phenomenon.
On paper, this should work: cursed ritual, spooky elevator, vengeful ghost woman, YouTube clout-chasers getting shredded. In execution, it’s like watching a safety video about why you shouldn’t ride with strangers, except the strangers are influencers and you start rooting for the elevator.
Plot: Press “B” for Bland
Our protagonist, Ryan, is an intern for a group of paranormal streamers who call themselves investigators but operate with the journalistic integrity of a broken ring light. The crew:
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Chloe – leader, brand-conscious, allegedly smart
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Kris – sleazy guy with a moustache and a secret
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Matty – nervous
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Izzy – there
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Kevin – also there
Ryan suggests they cover the elevator game, a ritual where you visit specific floors in a specific order and keep your eyes shut on the fifth floor or get torn apart by the Fifth Floor Woman. Naturally, this is the best business decision anyone’s ever made.
What he doesn’t tell them is that his sister Becki disappeared playing this same game, and he’s only there to find out what happened. It’s the emotional core of the movie, by which I mean they mention it a few times and then shove it into the plot like a sticky note that keeps falling off.
The gang tries the game once, the footage glitches out (technology has taste), and Kris refuses to redo it. Ryan reveals that Kris had an inappropriate relationship with Becki, who was underage. The group, understandably horrified, splinters.
Then, as if offended by the script’s pacing, the Fifth Floor Woman starts picking them off one by one. People go back to the elevator, die. Someone does the ritual again, dies. Ryan does it, gets chased. Matty freaks out, dies. Chloe researches the lore. They do the game again, fail, she dies, Ryan gets stuck in Ghost Limbo Forever. Finally, some random influencer shows up at the end to suggest the curse will go viral or something.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of mashing “repeat level” in a broken horror game.
Characters, or: Who Are You People and Why Are You Talkin—
To be fair, some Shudder movies thrive on vibes over character depth. Elevator Game unfortunately has neither. The cast does what they can, but it’s hard to act nuance when your job is to say, “Guys, this will get insane views” right before a CG ghost eats your face.
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Ryan (Gino Anania): Our hero, whose main traits are “sad” and “reckless.” He’s supposed to be driven by grief and obsession, but his emotional arc plays like, “I am tragically motivated, anyway let’s do this very obviously cursed thing again.”
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Chloe (Verity Marks): The one who occasionally reads things. She does the research, discovers the Fifth Floor Woman’s tragic backstory, and then still decides that the solution is “Let’s play the game again.” Girl, you could just write a blog post.
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Kris (Alec Carlos): The slimeball. He’s secretly been involved with underage Becki and refuses to redo the elevator game, not because it’s a horrifying experience but because it might expose his crimes. He dies early, which is not a spoiler so much as a mercy.
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Izzy, Kevin, Matty: A blur of faces and death scenes. Their deaths are technically there to raise the stakes, but by the time they start dropping, you’re mostly just trying to remember which one is which.
The Fifth Floor Woman herself is visually decent—long fingers, broken movements, solid “please don’t be there when the doors open” energy. But as a villain, she’s stuck doing the same thing over and over: appear, screech, tear people apart, dip. She’s less a character and more a recurring error message.
Lore: Cursed by Wikipedia
The movie really wants you to care about the rules of the elevator game, so it spends a lot of time repeating them:
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Go to floors in a specific order
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Don’t look at the woman on the fifth floor
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If you succeed, you enter another dimension
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If you fail, she kills you
Neat. Simple. Creepy in concept. The problem is, the film then decides this isn’t enough and slaps on an extra layer of retconned tragedy:
The Fifth Floor Woman is actually Allie, a sorority pledge who died in a hazing ritual. They left her in an elevator shaft, she got crushed, and now she’s a vengeful ghost stuck inside an internet ritual.
That’s… a lot. It’s like the movie panicked and thought, “We need a backstory! People love tragic backstories! Quick, add hazing!” The result feels bolted on instead of organic. The elevator game is supposed to be a weird, uncanny urban legend. Tying it to one random sorority mishap in one building makes it feel smaller, not bigger.
Also, if your ancient internet ritual turns out to be about a girl named Allie from Greek Row, I reserve the right to be slightly underwhelmed.
The Horror: Press “Close Door” to Skip
On a technical level, some of the scare setups should work. Elevators are inherently creepy:
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Small, enclosed spaces
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You’re at the mercy of the doors
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You don’t control who gets in
But Elevator Game mostly uses this setup like a checklist:
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Character enters elevator.
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They press buttons in the spooky prescribed order.
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Lights flicker.
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Someone breathes weirdly.
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Ding.
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Ghost.
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Screams, blood, done.
There’s no escalation, no inventive use of space, no real dread beyond “well, here we go again.” The spirit realm is just… darker. Same settings, less lighting, slight color grading change. It’s like halfway through production, the other dimension’s budget got cut.
The kills aren’t particularly memorable either. People get dragged, shredded, pulled apart, etc., but nothing sticks in the mind the way good supernatural horror does. It’s all noise, no lingering image beyond “elevator doors closing on your patience.”
Themes? Anyone? No? Okay.
You’d think a movie about:
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Online clout-chasing
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Exploitative content
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A girl exploited and discarded by a sorority
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A brother consumed by grief
…might have something to say about exploitation, virality, misogyny, or the way internet “content” feeds on tragedy.
Nah.
There are flickers of something interesting when Ryan reveals Kris’s predatory relationship with Becki, or when we learn Allie’s death was treated like collateral damage in a prank. But the film never follows through. These moments exist mainly to justify why the ghost is mad, not to actually interrogate any of the very real horror in that setup.
Instead, we get a final scene with Another Influencer marching into the same elevator to farm content off the last group’s disappearance. It’s supposed to be a dark commentary on how the cycle continues. Mostly it just plays like setup for Elevator Game 2: Content Creator Boogaloo, which nobody needs.
Lost Potential: The Real Horror
The most frustrating part is that buried under all this mediocrity is a movie that could have slapped.
You can imagine a better version where:
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The rules of the game are treated with real mythic weight
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The spirit world is genuinely strange and disorienting
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The influencer angle is used to skewer how horror gets commodified
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The ghost’s backstory actually ties into the idea of being watched, recorded, and discarded
Instead, we get something that feels like a half-remembered pitch for a streaming original someone rushed into production before the trend cooled.
Final Verdict: Take the Stairs
Elevator Game isn’t the worst horror film you’ll ever see, but it is aggressively forgettable—a sin almost worse than being bad. It squanders:
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A creepy premise
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A solid ghost design
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A relevant theme (internet fame + urban legends)
…on repetition, shallow characters, and lore that feels stapled together from spare parts.
If you want to watch something about cursed rituals and online culture, there are better options. If you want elevator horror, Devil did it better years ago. And if you’re just here for a scary time, you’re better off staring at the elevator in your own building at 3 a.m. and imagining things. Cheaper. Scarier. Better written.
In short: when it comes to this movie, always press “Door Open” and step out.
