Keisuke Horibe's "Akumu no Elevator" is completed and gets a full trailer

by Chris MaGee

Back at the beginning of the year we reported on how playwright turned author Hanta Kinoshita's best-selling comedy mystery novel "Akumu no Elevator: Nightmare after a Secret" was going to be adapted into a film by first time director Keisuke Horibe who previously starred in films like Koki Mitani's "The Magic Hour" and Masato Harada's "Climber's High".

Well it looks like the film has been completed, has a trailer, and Japanese film industry blogger Jason Gray has caught a press screening of it. He says the story of four strangers (a young salaryman, a yakuza drug mule, a middle-aged man, and a suicidal goth-loli) who get stuck together in an elevator "reminded me of something Otsuichi would've come up"; Otsuichi being the Japanese horror author whose stories were adapted into the 2005 ominbus film "Zoo".

Check out the official website for "Akumu no Elevator" here and then make sure to watch the trailer below. Obviously I haven't seen the film, but it reminds me of a much better "Hellevator: The Bottled Fools" the badly botched 2005 sci-fi suspense film by Hiroki Yamaguchi.... but don't listen to me, see for yourself. "Akumu no Elevator" is set for release in Japanese theatres in October.