Movie Review: The Cave

3/10

Oh dear. I don't know what's worse, that this irritating-tossers-get-trapped-underground film had such a high budget, or that I watched it.

I was expecting a fairly hokey "The Descent" rip off, with a sort of grimy, gore heavy approach. As it is, this is one of those terrible movies that achieves none of its aims. A pointless, CGI heavy prelude sets up a creepy cave that weird noises happen in. We're then introduced to your classic group of macho types, in this case instead of the usual marines or expert soldiers, we have a group of expert cave divers (in this case, diving is literal, as in underwater) who are hired to explore this creepy cave and map it. Wooo!

Cue a lot of posturing and C-List actors (Piper Perabo, Cole Hauser, Lena Headey) competing for the "most clichéd performance" award, whether as the feisty alpha female, the macho boss or the English scientist.

It's clear about twenty minutes in that we are in for an obvious and sub-par Alien "homage" with a fairly cool creature (wisely for most of the movie only seen in shadow and out of focus - a trick they fail to keep up for the end) stalking them through the tunnels they've been trapped in.

The "twist", that these are mutated people, is so obviously telegraphed it's barely a twist so I don;t even worry about it being a spoiler, the character deaths are so obviously influenced by other films (Alien, Jaws) it's almost like the writers and director just stuck scenes from films they love into their movie as well.

It's not all atrocious - some of the action cues are fairly effective, and TV star (of Invasion and recently Ugly Betty) Eddie Cibrian is fairly OK, but any hard work they have done here is totally undone by the films other flaws, which include an ending that, despite all of the silliness of the rest of the film actually manages to jump the shark!

As for any comparison with The Descent, the fact that they are underground is the only similarity, The Cave has none of that movie's originality, style or grittiness. It's also clearly hampered by its 12 rating, making it have all the terror and bloodiness of an episode of The Outer Limits. It's a sad fact that so many films that require, as this one does, a more gritty and harsh approach are instead lumbered with a "populist" rating to maximise its viewers. In this case, it;s probably since fifteen or eighteen year olds require a bit more maturity fromt heir plots and characters!

Don't waste your time - this is a film with all the depth, characterisation and tension of "The Core" and is just as hokey.

Til Next Time!

A