Underground

Being in the "biz" it was more or less evident to me that this film was unfinished and it's a shame that it was released this way since it had the potential to be a decent B horror flick.

Aside from some unremarkable acting (which is excusable when dealing with low budget horrors) the score and cinematography were competently executed. Make-up and special effects were decent aside from one horrendous CGI shot of snow. Where we get into trouble is in the edit.

An unforgivable number of scenes were disjointed and leaves the audience wondering "what is going on," "where am I now" or "who am I looking at?" I've seen such scenes before in what we call an assembly or rough cut. This is when the editor takes his/her first stab at a complete edit. It's usually after this that the production team gets a clear idea of what scenes need to be re-shot or what extra shots are needed to make the edit work or flow.

For whatever reason (lack of funding, actor availability, location no longer available, etc.) this was clearly not done which makes the film extremely frustrating to follow.

I recommend staying clear of this one. I'm a huge fan of horror films but I ended up fast forwarding the last 10 minutes just to get to the end because my brain got tired of trying to fill in the gaps.

Typical horror/survival movie, a bunch of young folk trapped in an underground army base, facing zombie like creatures, with super human powers. This "Sitting Duck " cast is an attractive lot. But they are void of any real acting skills and the script is no help what so ever. Of course they wander through darkness, argue with one another and no horror movie would be complete without the "Hey! Lets Split Up" routine, that never works in any fright film. Now the good news is, the movie is made very well and there are some interesting moments and very professional camera work. So Underground turns out to be a cut above ground, give it a watch. It reminded me a bit of "Descent" only not half as good.

"Underground" had potential to be great, but it never made it above less than mediocrity, sadly enough. Why? Well because of the lack of lighting. Now, I know that it was taking place in an underground bunker, but most of the scenes were so dark that it was hard to get a view of what was going on. Sure, it added to the realism of the lack of light far underneath the ground, but as a viewer of a movie, I would like to see what was going on. I didn't pay money to just sit around and look at poor-lit images all through an entire movie.

The story in "Underground" is the American government has been conducting secret experiments underground, gee - haven't we seen that before? And get this, of course there had to be some reference to notorious Dr. Mengele from World War II - just to add some diabolic twist to the storyline. Anyway, a bunch of young people are attending a rave at an abandoned military base - yep, you guessed it - the exact same military base where the government were conducting these inhuman experiments. After running afoul with gang-bangers, the people get trapped underground. But they aren't alone, they are being stalked by the genetically altered hybrids of man-beasts.

"Underground" had potential to be much more than it turned out to be. Don't get me wrong, the storyline - although cheesy and been seen numerous times before - wasn't all that bad. The storyline worked out well enough, and there was a great sense of claustrophobia and paranoia in the movie. But the complete lack of proper lighting really made the movie unbearable to sit through. Which was a shame.

As for the effects in the movie, well they were actually alright, and this subspecies of genetically altered humans were looking great. They did have that ferocious beastly quality to them. Just a shame they were mostly kept in the shadows or near-complete darkness most of the time.

"Underground" had a great ensemble of actors and actresses who did put on good performances. I think the only one I recognized in this movie was Jack Donner (playing Gunther). So it was nice to have a horror movie with a cast of fresh, new faces for a change.

Despite having potential, "Underground" never really kicked it off for me, because the lack of lighting really brought down the enjoyment of the movie. This style of keeping everything, and I do mean everything, in darkness is so early 1980's horror movie. It worked nicely back in the day, but today we want to see the dread and horror stalking us beneath the surface of the ground.

Neil Marshall's THE DESCENT was a fine stab at a survival horror yarn, featuring some excellent locations (those dank and dismal caves were a perfect backdrop for the scares) and a race of nasty villains who seemed to be descended from Gollum. UNDERGROUND is a cheap and nasty American version of the above, with the setting swapped to an underground military bunker.

Unfortunately, UNDERGROUND has much in common with modern-day B-movies as it's the kind of film you watch and mildly enjoy in places, but soon forget about once the credits roll. The script and production values of this film are poor, with much of the running time consisting of too much repetitive wandering around in semi-darkness. Needless to say the characters are bland and undistinguished, with nobody to root for.

The monsters in the film are passable, and I enjoyed the couple of fight scenes that we get here and there (the choreography isn't too shabby). As with many B-movies, the gore content is ramped up to compensate for failings elsewhere, and there are a couple of great gags involving eyeball violence and a twist on the old "ripped in half" joke. Sadly, the film as a whole is just too dark and bland to be worth watching, though.

Some friends get into a nasty and potentially deadly fight at a rave, which just happens to be staged above a former US Military bunker. They escape into said bunker, which happens to be populated by a mad former WW2 Nazi scientist and his horrific mutant, killing machine mutants - or Trogs as he calls them. A previous attempt by Special Forces had failed to destroy these creatures, so what chance do our unarmed macho guys and hot chick girls have of survival? Well if you have nothing better to do and can can stomach 84 minutes of pretty weak acting, cheap effects, a dark, often shaky picture and complete unoriginality then Underground is what I call a once only view. There is plenty of action and it is pretty gory but the execution is far from good.