What I Think About Movies I've Seen

This movie tells the stories of five different groups of people stuck in elevators. Scenes from each of these elevators are spliced together so that as the movie plays out, you can see the progression of each of them concurrently. The settings are:

• An affluent married couple and their 14-year-old daughter leaving their apartment to go to some kind of benefit event. Their marriage is already pretty weak to start with, and the intensity of the situation doesn't help much. The real star of this scene, and of the entire movie, is the daughter, played by Kathryn MaGill. She stands silently while her parents argue behind her, but her facial expressions convey an impressive range of emotion.
• A pair of long-time friends who work together in an entertainment business. One of them is wearing a white female gorilla suit with a pink tutu. They were fighting before they got onto the elevator, and both are bloodied. Their cramped quarters force them to try to work out their issues.
• A large group of around eight or nine people jammed into an elevator together. Most of them are relative strangers, although there is a couple who are occasionally making out and perhaps another couple of people who know each other. They're crammed in pretty tightly, which of course leads to a lot of confrontation over the course of the film.
• A man trapped alone in a hospital elevator. He's visiting a friend, or perhaps a relative, who is on life support and near death. He is initially bored and annoyed at being trapped, but then begins to deal with his emotions. He appears to be documenting this experience for himself, because he is actively manipulating the camera to show different angles.
• Another lone man, presumably a businessman in an office. He clearly doesn't like being trapped and starts to lose it pretty quickly. His scenes are unique in that we see him through a black and white security camera, and we can't hear him. Once he discovers the camera, he begins pleading with it to let him out.

I really like movies like this because without a wide range of settings or any special effects of any kind, they are forced to focus on the story, and I wish more movies did that. Writer/director/editor/co-producer Jen White was in attendance at this screening, along with many of the cast members, and they mentioned that while the basic story was scripted, a lot of the scenes were improvised, and several of the actors knew each other and worked very well together. It did start to feel a bit long toward the end, and in particular the scene in the hospital, but overall I really enjoyed the film.