Few things are as infuriating as great horror settings that are entirely wasted on trite scenarios. Catacombs immense and ominously dark mazes where thousands of ancient dead bodies are stored form the absolute greatest locations to set a horrific story in, but the creators of this movie ruined all the potential they were offered here. Surely this could have been an interesting film, but the unoriginal script almost immediately reverts to clichéd situations, chaotic editing and creating false suspense. The emotionally unstable Victoria travels to Paris, following an invitation from her sister Carolyn, and promptly gets dragged into the wild nightlife of illegal parties thrown in the catacombs underneath the city center. When she gets separated from the group, Victoria finds herself relentlessly pursued by a raving madman and they expect us to believe it concerns an inbred and carnivorous monster wearing a goat head mask. You'll notice right away there are several things wrong with the narrative. Why would the partying sister bother to invite such an uptight individual like Victoria to a place where drugs and hideous Techno music reign? Why would an insatiable killing machine exclusively chase isolated party-goers when there are hundreds of unsuspecting easy targets waiting to be butchered in the room next door? Once Victoria is trapped inside the underground labyrinth, "Catacombs" turns into an intolerably boring and irritating film. She just stumbles around the passageways for hours, praying the batteries of her flashlight won't die which they do a couple of times, of course, and you'll find yourself staring at a black screen throughout very long periods - and suffering ridiculous injuries, like cutting her leg on the spokes of a rusty bicycle. Oh, the horror! This movie is slow and boring, the hectic editing of randomly creepy images is pointless, the soundtrack is god-awful and not a single one of the lead characters is even mildly amiable. Victoria constantly whines and, to me personally, it's a complete mystery why she's such a confused woman. She's young, attractive, supposedly intelligent and free to spontaneously leave everything behind and travel to Europe. So
what the heck is the problem? The French boys serve as dumb screen fillings and Carolyn is positively one of the most annoying horror characters ever. Pink is an even worse actress than singer, for that matter. Throughout almost its entire playtime, "Catacombs" was destined to receive a rating 1 out of 10 from me, but then came the ending which suddenly brought an unexpected highpoint. There are two end "twists", by the way. One is painfully frustrating and caused me to hate the film even more, but luckily there's a second one which turned tragedies around a bit and all of a sudden the film was good enough to increase my rating towards two.
