This movie was so exciting that after about 20 minutes, my wife and I decided to do some dusting. After 40 minutes, we did a little carpet cleaning, and after 60 minutes we moved the air purifier to the other side of the room and ran a cleverly-concealed extension cord over to it. After about 80 minutes we turned it off and went to bed. All this - while drinking beer.
It started with a pretty cool prologue - some Eastern-European guys go to a remote church in the mountains, looking for some sort of treasure. They know there's a cave under the church, so they set off some explosives to get to it. Kind of a bad idea, the floor collapses, the church collapses, the whole damned mountainside comes down on top of them. Great surround sound effects - the new subwoofer shook the whole room!
Thirty years later - we meet out main characters. Roger Corman could do a much better job with characters. These people are uninteresting, indistinguishable from one another, and just plain generic. They go into the cave, demonstrating the requisite amount of macho BS. The sets are pretty good, I guess they built these huge cave interiors in a studio somewhere. Anyhow, blah blah blah, they start getting attacked by monsters. The whole thing is pretty dark and the monsters are usually fast-edited in such a way that it's not scary, it's just hard to see anything. The parts that are supposed to put you on the edge of your seat just make you feel like you're supposed to be on the edge of your seat, as you recline comfortably. The characters, which you barely know, much less care about, get killed off in a bunch of "dramatic" scenes which just made me want to hit pause and go get another beer. And then I got on Amazon and ordered a CD. Acoustic Planet by Craig Chaquico. He used to be the guitarist for Jefferson Airplane, way back when. I heard one of his songs on the Smooth Jazz channel, and it's a nice mix of jazz, pop, classical, Latin, and rock influences. Oh, where was I?
Yeah, anyway, we watched another ten minutes of this dark and rather uninteresting stuff, and then we went to bed. I guess we'll watch the last 15 minutes today.
Stupid, stupid movie! (b***h-slaps TV screen)
As you said, it started promisingly enough, but it's gotta be one of the dullest horror films I've ever seen. And they kept playing the bad movie clichés, such as sloppy editing in the attacks so you couldn't tell what was going on, or dumb science, like Cole Hauser de-evolving in hours or everybody not being cold at all after so many hours wet, but it wasn't any funny. Not even Piper Perabo rock climbing in a sports bra.
Let's just forget it ever happened and watch "The descent" again, shall we?
Whoa, someone besides me has seen this crap?
It does win for having one of the most remarkably stupid taglines around...
Beneath Heaven Lies Hell.
Beneath Hell Lies...
...THE CAVE.
Well, you see, there was the whole Heaven/Hell motif. They had to go through a church to get underground and the monsters' lair was all full of fire, sulphur pits, and lava.
I saw this one and it was pretty forgettable. THE DESCENT was much better - and it wasn't what I'd call great.
I liked it. It's not great but I thought it was fun. Some neat b-monsters and cave climbing action, plus a "shocking" ending :teddyr: that left the door open for more (I'm surprised Sony hasn't announced a DTV sequel yet).
I also enjoyed the similar The Cavern (2005), and even Caved In (2006) had its very cheesy but entertaining moments.
So it's got a shocking ending? Okay, now you're gonna force me to sit through the rest of this thing :teddyr:
Actually my favorite cave movie was Centipede. It was bad, stupid, had a laughable monster and the characters were a bunch of goofs, but I found it very entertaining. Pretty hot babe (If you didn't mind her Minnie Mouse voice), great atmosphere - the cinematography was superb compared to The Cave, and just an overall sense of "Okay, our movie isn't great, but we did the best we could with our limited talent and funds".
I thought this movie had some interesting set pieces, like the Cave where they made their first base camp, before getting stuck.
Only decent monster designs. Done by Patrick Tatoplois (sp)-the man who designed the American Godzilla.
This movie is so bad, my friend's have made a running joke out it. If one of use feels sick, terrible, etc., we say "I feel lower than The Cave" . You see, we all made the mistake of going to see this in theaters on opening day :lookingup:
Quote from: onagro on July 21, 2008, 03:36:44 PM
This movie is so bad, my friend's have made a running joke out it. If one of use feels sick, terrible, etc., we say "I feel lower than The Cave" . You see, we all made the mistake of going to see this in theaters on opening day :lookingup:
Mine do something simialr, only with "Cloverfield"
Quote from: akiratubo on July 19, 2008, 04:59:32 PM
Whoa, someone besides me has seen this crap?
To our sorrow, yes.
It could have been so EASY to get this right. They obviously had a huge budget to work with and very competetent SFX people. Why? Why? Why?
I'd say the person to blame here is the director.
I watched this one on cable so not paying theater prices to see it may have influenced my opinion. I thought it was alright, not great but okay, much better than "Caved In", maybe a little bit better than "Centipede". This is a film where a sequel, based on what happened at the end, could be much better than the original.
I remember watching this with my friend. We were just guessing what was going to happen next and just laughing are way through it because we were right all the time. Pretty generic movie all around.
Quote from: indianasmith on July 19, 2008, 09:28:48 PM
I saw this one and it was pretty forgettable. THE DESCENT was much better - and it wasn't what I'd call great.
Are you kidding me? The Descent has to be one of the top 5 worst movies ever made! How can you make a movie with 5 chicks and no nudity?!? It didn't even have a good story, and to top off the bad story it was all a dream... what a hunk of s**t! I wish they would have left the one promising part (copper pipe to the face) out of the movie so I could say it WAS the worst ever! I've never seen The Cave, but if it is worse than The Descent then people should seriously die for writing it.
I though "The descent" rocked. Honest. It may not have a very literate script, and some moments are plain silly (the opening rafting sequence sucks), but when it comes to action, gore and claustrophobia I still have to see a movie that can match it.
I finally watched this film last night, and I have to say it was complete rubbish. I know I'm not supposed to over-analyze or expect too much from a film like this, but tap dancing Elizabeth in Hell, did this movie suck!
Alright, so you have good creature effects, underutilized though they were, and a great setting. The only problem is that the characters really didn't stand out. These characters don't need to be complex, but for God's sake does everyone in this movie have to be a typical pretty boy? I couldn't tell one character from the next. Along with tame death scenes and plenty of boring down time. Seriously folks, it's a monster movie. Give the characters one characteristic per piece to stand them all out from one another, and then slaughter them horribly. If you're not going to go the bloody disgusting route, then at least make the death scenes psychologically unnerving.
Honestly, if you want a good horror flick in a cave, grab The Descent and skip this forgettable nonsense.