Soviet-era secret sites have been the subject of quite a few horror movies in recent years, including "The Chernobyl Diaries" (2012), "Devil's Pass" (2013), "Apollo 18" (2011) and "Sputnik" (2020). "The Dam" joins the list, though with an important caveat: this is an overtly anti-Soviet and anti-Russian movie, which is hardly surprising given its Ukrainian 2025 vintage.
The premise here is that the June 2023 destruction (by the Russians) of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Dam revealed a host of secrets hitherto buried beneath the waters of the dam. Among those secrets was a secret Soviet-era project to create a race of male super warriors and female psychics.
In September 2023, "Mara," a female Ukrainian soldier, shows up to a small group of soldiers close to the front lines. She explains that she is searching for her soldier-brother "Wind," who she believes is still alive and near the area of the dam. She ends up leading that group of Ukrainian soldiers into one of Russia's underground Cold War secret sites where, they discover, human experiments had taken place. Enter the zombies (which in some cases are pretty decent looking).
The rest of the movie follows from this basic plot, with the addition of an appropriately vile Russian scientist "Karlov," who is discovered by the team during their search. Karlov is attempting to resurrect past psuedo-scientific horrors for present uses in the Russian-Ukrainian War. He explains that had the original research panned out, the USSR would never have collapsed and "Russia and Ukraine would always have stayed together."
Minus the political content, "The Dam" is a bit of a throwback to 80s-style U. S. action-horror. So, if that is your jam, you will probably like what is depicted here. Big men with muscles carry even bigger guns, accompanied by heavy metal music, exploding zombies, memorable one-liners, etc. I cannot say that my tastes run in that direction. But the movie, while a bit of stem-winder, is well-done for what it is, particularly given its budget and (one must imagine) difficulties in filming and producing.
