Friday, October 13, 2006

The Cave

(2005) ***


Tough-as-balls Jack, his little brother Tyler, and a bunch of expendable underwater explorers/biologists are asked to explore a labyrinth of underwater caves in order to seek out new eco-system life. No sooner will you say, “Wow, this film shares a lot of similarities with the far-superior The Descent!” do our intrepid explorers find themselves face-to-face with fairly-well-rendered creatures that live in the dark. As if the gang does not have enough stress to deal with, Jack, who is their best hope for getting the hell out of this cluster-fuck of a situation, has becomes infected following his first encounter with the creatures and begins to exhibit strange am-I-turning-into-one-of-the-creatures? behavior jeopardizing everyone’s good time.

Hooray, my first creature feature of Horrorthon 2006! With it’s high body count, cool setting, and fairly non-stop creature action, The Cave is much more entertaining than I would’ve expected when I reluctantly slipped it into my DVD player. Director Bruce Hunt wisely uses a large cast, good for creature-munching (i.e., think red shirt guys on any original Star Trek episode). The action is fast-paced and well choreographed, despite some minor editing problems (i.e., think of the dizzying action at the beginning of Batman Forever). No joke, the plot is nearly the same as The Descent, which set the bar far too high for any other film of its kind to compete with. Nevertheless The Cave is a fun monster-romp that doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that.

Watch the trailer. Come on, you know you want to. Coooooooome ooooooon. Jerks.
The Cave Movie Trailer

2 comments:

Octopunk said...

God, I saw this when it came out and I can barely remember it. Every time I recall an aspect of it, I think of how overwhelmingly better that aspect was in The Descent.

50PageMcGee said...

beneath heaven lies hell. beneath hell lies the cave.

well, at least we can map heaven and hell now. we know they're both above the cave. which puts heaven anywhere from just under a mile under romania to an infinite distance out, but still over romania.

Malevolent

 2018  ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...