The Mine

"Abandoned Mine" is sort of a scary movie for children. Or at least I hope so, because if this was seriously meant as a horror movie, then it just failed utterly and completely. There was absolutely nothing scary about the movie, aside from the fact it was lacking scared and the level of boredom it managed to invoke.

The story in "Abandoned Mine" is about a group of young friends who go out to an allegedly haunted mine together to celebrate Halloween. They have a good time and goof around, until one of them starts telling the tale that took place one hundred years earlier. And as a storm starts to roll in, the youngsters seek shelter within the mine shaft, and as curiosity gets the better of them, they decide to venture deeper into the mine to have a look around and see if they can scare up some spirits and ghosts for Halloween.

For a family movie, then "Abandoned Mine" would be adequate, as there is no gore, no mutilation, no scary parts, no nothing, in it to upset the viewers. But if you sit here and watch it, hoping it to be a proper horror movie, like I did, you will be sorely disappointed.

As a movie taking place in a haunted mine, there never was any sense of dread, claustrophobia or panic to be felt throughout the movie. Whether it was because of a fairly weak storyline or because the actors failed to portray such emotions, well I am most likely to say because of the lack of a proper storyline.

The people hired for the roles in "Abandoned Mine" were doing good enough jobs with their given characters, although they just didn't have much to work with.

If you want to be properly entertained by one of the spelunking horror movies, your money would be better spent on either of the "The Descent" movies. "Abandoned Mine" failed on many levels.

As the other reviewer noted, this is safe for kids to watch. But, I don't know if I'd want to subject my kids to the sub-par acting and storyline this movie delivers. I think I would much rather have them see Despicable Me 2, which is actually entertaining for adults as well(and still kid safe). I am not even sure how this got a pg-13 rating. I heard no swearing or even sexual innuendo to require such a rating. All I heard was a lot of banter from a bunch of teenagers that were not interesting at all. 15 minutes in, and I gave up on it. My time is too precious to wait around and see if an obviously bad film is going to get better.

This movie didn't just lack sex, gore, and swearing-it lacked any bit of color to make the story interesting. No offense, but it's like a church commissioned this film.

That kind of thing might be good for some, but not for me.

A mine is reportedly haunted by one of the men who used to work there and his two daughters, who were killed in front of him. Skeptical about the hauntings, five friends decide to take a trip down into the mine as part of their Halloween outing, but when strange happenings start going on, the group members start to realise that maybe there is more to the story than what they originally thought.

Abandoned Mine is pretty poor in every sense of the word. Poor plot, poor story and poor execution. The only decent thing about it was the acting as this wasn't that bad at all. Unfortunately you can only go so far with only decent acting when everything else is so poor and even an experienced actor would have struggled to make this movie more interesting.

For a reportedly creepy horror it really isn't very creepy at all and that's a bit of a pity really because the setting of an abandoned mine is a good one. You just have to see movies such as The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 and The Descent to see how movies where the main setting - or part of one - is underground and can work really well in bringing an uneasy feeling to the audience. Abandoned Mine doesn't do that, though, and instead of being a creepy horror it just turns out to be a Jackass type of movie.

The twist of the movie (if it can be called that) can really be seen coming very early on as well, especially given what we already know about the group members. I have seen much worse but that doesn't mean that this is any good.

Definitely wouldn't recommend watching this one.

This film is massively mediocre. Now that is obviously not a compliment, but it doesn't have to be an insult either.

It has elements of recovered cam shots, but is not a found footage film. It has some elements of horror, but is not scary enough to disturb even the most highly strung small child. It has "coming of age" elements, but you don't really get to know the characters or invest in them enough to care. It's quite cheap, but not funny or "so bad it's good"

This reminded me of a cheaper version of a Dawson's Creek Halloween episode. Which is... OK.

Would I pay to go and see a Dawson Creek Halloween rip off? Hell No! But if it was on Netflix and I was desperately trying to avoid doing some work I might put it on. Actually I did, and it was... OK

And it's pretty clear from the initial scene that this is a B movie all the way. Though the rating should give it away with only a PG-13. In my experience, new movies with high budgets tend to go in for gore, which means an R rating. However, I love B movies and the hokiness that comes with them (and find fear is not based on disgust), so I gave this one a try. The overall movie was decent to be sure. There were the typical stereotypes (dumb jock, cool jock, comical Indian, dumb blond, smart blond with short hair) and they were done well-ish. Though I will admit to finding every joke made at the expense of the Indian guy a bit much within the first 5 minutes of his appearance.

The real problem was in plot development. It was one of those where the writers clearly were unsure how to end the film after they gave an actually well done and surprising twist. They do play with time so separate events overlap at the end so you get numerous perspectives and that was really well done and entertaining. But the plot itself just sort of ended without a nice tie up. If that doesn't bug you, then give this one a try. However, I will warn you that you ought to keep the remote handy for fast forwarding in the beginning. The character development is long and since the film takes place at Halloween, viewers are forced to watch a montage of five minutes (but felt like an eternity) of two girls trying on costumes. Unless they are drag queens (and they aren't) there is no realistic way for two average white girls to have that many current Halloween costumes. It that sort of unbelievability that kills a B movie since they have so much less to work with. I relied on fast forward to take me through and I wasn't totally disappointed that I did continue on.