Movie studios make films about real people all the time, but there’s always been something uniquely gross about the desire to adapt the death of Elisa Lam into a horror movie. Lam was the Canadian college student whose body was found in the water tank of a Los Angeles hotel in 2013, and her story became an internet legend when spooky security camera footage of her behaving strangely in an elevator before her death was released. Nicolas Winding Refn was set to direct a movie based on Lam’s story called The Bringing, but he dropped out in 2014. Then, in 2016, Sony canned the project completely.
Now, The Last House On The Left and Friday The 13th producer Sean Cunningham is set to make a totally different horror movie based on the slightly mysterious and tragic circumstances of Lam’s death. Titled The Elevator Game, Bloody Disgusting says the movie will be about a woman investigating an “internet ritual” that caused the disappearance of her sister. The next chunk of the premise is worth quoting in full:
Buried in the darkest corners of the Internet are the rules for one of the world’s most dangerous games. According to the Game, if you enter an elevator and press the buttons in a certain sequence, you will be transported to another dimension in the spirit plane…the Otherworld. There you may be granted your deepest secret desire or you may find death and damnation.
Once again: A real person did die.