It isn't long before something living in the shadows starts to pick off the team.
It would be easy, reading the synopsis, to brand this a rip-off of 'The Decent' (I did when I picked it up), but with both being released the same year, they were almost certainly in development at the same time. That said, to anyone who has already seen one, the other can't help but invite comparisons.
With that in mind, this movie can best be described as 'The Decent' without interesting characters, or suspense, but with shittier monsters, and a ridiculous over-the-top action sequence in the third act.
Quite how such low levels of suspense have been achieved, given the premise and setting, is quite a mystery; but at least some of the credit has to go to the cast. When the characters in peril seem so disinterested in their predicament, what chance do we the viewers have to feel fear on their behalf?
The lighting and DP work is just awful, with much of the moving being too dark and / or frantically filmed to follow. Annoyingly the disc features a special feature "into the cave" which shows that these explorers simply do not operate in such dark conditions. The floodlights on the cameras used by real divers are easily bright enough to illuminate everything, leaving me wondering what kind of substandard shitty equipment the 'crack underwater caving team' in the movie are using!
After an hour or so of trying, and failing, to build suspense in the cramped and dark caves with barely glimpsed monster, suddenly we find ourselves in a huge, brightly lit cave with monsters flying all over the place and huge explosions. It's out of place, and if the movie hadn't already been so poor it would gave ruined it.
And then there's a predictable twist which, while it fails as a punchline, is Honestly, the most interesting concept in the movie, and would work brilliantly as a setup for a far better sequel.
Disclaimer:
If you look through the archives, you'll see that I've been using "Bought from Poundland" as a tag since at least 2011.
At the end of October 2013 I decided that all of my 2014 movies would be purchased from Poundland, and began buying up horror movies, to ensure I would have enough come October 2014.
In March 2014 I took a part time job at Poundland.
In accordance with the companies social media policy, in September 2014 I contacted Poundland's social media team to check that I would be okay to carry on with my plan to use the "bought from Poundland" tag.
I have been given the go-ahead on condition that I make the following clear:
All the reviews on this blog are entirely the opinion of Will Tingle, the reviews are not endorsed by Poundland in any way and (as should be obvious from some of the more scathing ones) are certainly not reviews I have been paid to write.
In short: The views expressed in this blog are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Poundland or it's owners, shareholders, or management.
Yes, I remember both coming out around a very similar time and wondering what the fixation was with underground movies at the time. The Descent was a far superior movie. This one was hogwash!
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