The Cavern [DVD]

Well, I'll say one thing for The Cavern (aka Within). It certainly keeps you guessing - guessing what is going on (since you can't see anything most of the time) and guessing what this or that character just said. Now I know it can't be easy lighting scenes that take place far below the surface of the earth, but throw us a bone here; you have to extinguish every light in your house to have any hope of seeing anything at all here. And if the lighting's not bad enough, you're often stuck with POV shots pointing at nothing in particular and shaking all over the place - an effect which is multiplied during the film's more intense moments. The filmmakers call it the hypershake, as if they invented some groovy new film technique; to me, it just looks like the cameraman was drunk out of his mind. Did I mention how these big moments are punctuated by a veritable orgy of flashing lights? Brilliant, eh? Hey, just to make all those pitch dark scenes even harder to make out, let's take the opportunity to bombard the viewer's eyes with bright flashing lights every so often!

As far as the story goes, you have eight explorers setting out to explore an uncharted cave in remote Kazakhstan (this is apparently what these people do with their lives, although I'm hard pressed to say how they support themselves). Except for an annoying little man writing a book on the subject, they're all experienced spelunkers with something of a history together. You see, there was a tragedy a couple of years earlier - and there's nothing like some good old we're-trapped-miles-below-the-surface panic to bring buried personal issues boiling up to the surface. This exploration is hardly begun before one dude gets himself disemboweled and the others quickly find themselves intentionally trapped by someone or something. From this point on, it's a desperate effort to find another way out before they all fall victim to whatever monster is definitely in there with them. They walk a while, pause to argue among themselves, and then wait for the monster to kill one of them so that they can get moving again - over and over. It's really annoying to see these characters argue amongst themselves over what happened two years earlier, especially since it takes valuable time away from that whole running for their lives thing. Speaking of annoying, the ending is guaranteed to inspire a few choice words from anyone who suffers through it. It is, in a word, stupid. I wanted to slap this movie when the end credits started rolling.

This is a low-budget film, so I suppose I should cut it a little slack. The cave system (or at least what little I could see of it) did not look like a fake set, the acting was pretty good for the most part, and the gore is nicely done. I also detect the influence of The Blair Witch Project in the overall presentation - I don't think it necessarily works here, but it wasn't a bad idea in and of itself. It's hardly worth talking about the filmmakers' approach to the story, though, as the movie is all but doomed by the terrible lighting of the whole underground experience (did I mention that, on a couple of occasions, the screen went completely black for an extended period of time, while the characters screamed in the background?). I'm not saying I would have liked this film if I had actually been able to see what was going on, but I guess we'll never know.

The warnings that this is rubbish start early. How do you get eight people with all their caving and camping gear into two small Jeeps? How come they walk to the cave with small, near empty back packs, but have all their ropes, lights and other kit when they get there? Why do they carry on in spite of realising one of their number has lied about his experience and ALL their lights start flickering? If you are perpared to forgive all that,you have to watch a film where a cast of poor actors (in both senses) play cartoon horror types who are all floundering about in the dark, as is the audience. It is basically a predictable underground slant on the old "ten little whatever-is-politically-correct" getting knocked off one-by-one. It would be kinder to disembowel your DVD player than put this on it. (I only gave it one star because Amazon don't do minus stars.)

Ok *contains spoilers* *which really doesn't matter* I will admit to being utterly stunned by this film, the easiest way to describe it it imagine being locked in a trashcan with a bunch of flashlights and being thrown off a cliff, thats 90 percent of the film right there, honestly its pretty nauseating stuff after a while you get motion sickness...
Basically it boils down to this: a bunch of people you will not care about get trapped in a cave by a burn victim/caveman/wolf/bear/hybrid thing, and after lots of running around in the dark with flashlights it kills all the dudes grabs the girls...er.... gets sentimental (cue flashback)kills the hitable girl and the film ends abruptly with it raping the ish hitable girl to death. I mean it just ENDS roll credits ENDS with her getting raped.. what the hell. This film is without a doubt, soul sucking gut wrenchingly unwatchably awful.