'Lift (2024)' is literally nothing. There's no part of it that I didn't dislike. It's such a made-by-committee, more-formulaic-than-formulaic exercise in capitalist cynicism. The epitome of 'made for streaming' as a pejorative; all the worst things about Netflix movies rolled into one uninspired, uninteresting and unenjoyable mess that practically calls you a sucker to your face for having clicked on it. It might just be the first feature not to have an aesthetic. It's total trash disguised as inconsequential fluff. The worst part about it is that it isn't completely incompetent, it isn't painfully boring and it isn't bafflingly bizarre. It's just soul-crushingly bland, the kind of thing that seems "fine" simply because it exists and you couldn't care less about it. It would be easy to mistake it for something bang average, to write it off as something middle-of-the-road and utterly harmless, simply because it's such a blatantly passionless project that it just sort of happens before your eyes. It doesn't just require you to turn your brain off, it actively turns it off for you and it doesn't bother to even try and pass as "fun" while it does. It exists purely to devour engagement, to inflate statistics, to play on your television while you do something, anything else. It's the opposite of art, a product not dissimilar to the NFT it prominently features in its opening movement. It has no charisma, no charm, no... anything. It's as hollow as they come. Maybe it's not that deep. Maybe it's not worth getting worked up about. Maybe it's no worse than the thousands of others just like it. But enough is enough. We have to stop letting them get away with this. We have to make a stand and demand entertainment that actually entertains, art that is actually artful. We can't let this auto-play drivel be the future of film. Am I still watching? No, Netflix. No, I am not.
Review of Lift
