Basement is one of those horror movies where it uses very little blood and gore and uses the atmosphere and the situation to scare you, unfortunately for this movie, it fails to do it's job. Danny Dyer and Jimi Mistry star in Basement, which is about a group of anti-war protesters driving home after a demo. They decide to use a route through the woods to which Danny Dyer's character, Gary, conveniently needs to go to the toilet and so the group stops. While he goes to do his business, they get out of the car and stretch their legs and walk around the woods only to find an underground chamber. Now the group are trapped in this underground basement with the exit sealed and no way out, what's more is that there's something down there trying to kill them. As much as I really want to say something good about Basement, I just can't do it. The movie started okay and the pacing was good, we're introduced to the main characters of the movie and we learn a little about them (which is hardly anything) and then they find the underground hatch and that's where everything goes wrong. When they locked the characters in the hatch, they also forgot to lock in the story, the plot, the script and everything else. The main problem with Basement is that the plot was very stretched, adding pointless scenes to the movie and actually making the runtime of 95 minutes a problem as it was too long. There were quite a few scenes that were unnecessary, it didn't set the creepy atmosphere that the movie was supposed to do either and you could have easily cut half an hour out of the movie and not miss anything. The acting is quite bad and their performances weren't believable at all except for Danny Dyer, who's the only believable actor in the cast as he plays himself, which is usual in most movies Danny Dyer stars in and his acting is still dire. The rest of the cast had the same problem, there were no performances that really stood out in your mind. The movie is just bad on so many levels.
The problem with Basement is almost everything. The story was quite confusing, almost non-existent and quite stupid at times and the ending is possibly the most ridiculous thing about the movie. Also, the movie became boring and confusing as the movie went on. The characters had nothing to them, they were uninteresting, boring and they had no personality and definitely could have been written much better. This is supposed to be a horror movie and yet there's absolutely nothing remotely scary or creepy about it. The only thing I do like about Basement is that it doesn't use a lot of blood and gore to scare you but it tries to use that claustrophobic feeling but it's a shame that it didn't work. This movie had loads of potential and it could have been next to the likes of The Descent if the movie was done well but I think Basement would have been a little bit better if it was a short film.
Basement is the worst UK horror movie I've seen this year, without a doubt. There was literally no plot, no direction, no story, no character development, and no appeal
almost absolutely nothing. There's not even one memorable scene or performance, the whole movie was just bad. Danny Dyer proved that he could be a good actor as he did a very good performance in Malice in Wonderland but he was quite bad in Basement and it's frustrating to see, let's hope he can choose a better movie in the future. Overall, Basement is quite a poor attempt to try and scare you and it's also a poor attempt at making a movie. I'm actually stuck, as I don't know who would like this movie, I can't really see anybody liking this as most people would probably be disappointed. If you want a good suggestion, skip this and watch The Hole, which is basically similar to Basement.
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