The Depraved

The premise of this movie looked interesting. I never heard of "Urban Exploring" before. I am a small town guy. But in a country like Germany with its past, it make a lot of sense. Sadly this movie altough good in some aspect, didn't manage to be nearly as good as "As Above So Below" wich is set in Paris Catacombs and that i watched early this spooky season.

So first of all the movie takes so much time to start off. Yes suspense and story building is important, but i never felt it achieved either. The movie is well directed and the camera angles, lights etc are on point, and the acting felt very decent too, but i was just hoping that it would eventually start to be an horror movie.

It eventually does, but you understand quite fast what is going to happen and i felt its where it dropped the ball.

The main issue is how STUPID the characters are. Yes horror movies characters are often cliché and for a movie to work, you got to have these characters make a few "dumb decisions". But in this case its again and again and as many other reviewers said, i wanted to yell at my screen because of how dumb they were and i knew exactly what they should had done to avoid what happened.

Is the "torture porn" at least worth it? Not really. You got one solid scene for sure but thats it. The movie is mostly a thriller and a "cat and mouse" type of movie but again leading to the aspect that these characters were so insufferably dumb to me, that i couldn't care ultimately if they died or not.

In the end the movie bored me at times. Despite the short runtime i looked at the time remaining multiple times. That said i do feel a lot was very well done on a technical side of things so i am gonna bump it from a 4 to a 5 out of 10. It is also a German "indy movie" from my understanding, not an Hollywood production.

My version was dubbed in French and there was 0 German or other foreign languages. They all spoke in french so i had no need for subtitles or anything. French is my native language. The dubbing was surprisingly fine for a low budget horror movie.

A group of people take in an underground tour of the tunnels beneath Berlin. All is going relatively well until their fairly enigmatic guide suffers an unfortunate accident. If being lost in these deep, dark, endless maze of tunnels weren't bad enough, they also happen upon a deranged nut-case/former border guard.

I thought I was in for yet another low-budget, badly acted horror flick of little real value, but as the movie wore on, I found, much to my surprise, it to be fairly well done. Highly derivative, but well done nonetheless. I actually found myself caring if these characters survived or not, no small feat as most of these type of films have such one-dimensional cardboard characters that I usually can't be bothered. Which I guess is also true here to some extent, but I was drawn into the story regardless.

If all you want is a spooky movie with monsters and atmospheric settings, this is as good as any. If you expect anything like a logical story, well, maybe not so good. The film depends on a common misconception; every big city has endless tunnels beneath and they are all connected as well as lost and forgotten. And this is nonsense. Unlike Paris which has quarries beneath it, most cities do not have anything like a connected maze of tunnels. And most tunnels, even abandoned subway stations, are used for something and are well documented.

This film, like others of its type, substitutes basements or even abandoned factories with their windows covered for underground areas. One look at the brickwork of these phony tunnels is enough to reveal the sets are ordinary locations dressed as spooky tunnels. The huge size of many of the locations should tip off the viewer that they are seeing nothing more mysterious than an old warehouse.

And our explorers are totally unprepared for their adventure. The have no hardhats, no first aid kit, no proper clothing, nothing but a few dinky flashlights. If not for their "guide" somehow toting 5 sets of rubber waders in his tiny backpack they would never have made it through a flooded tunnel. We are further told that scrawny teens can climb 50 feet, hand over hand, on a thin rope. And thats up and down. Small wonder the actual climbing is not shown! And of course the abandoned tunnels are full of improbable characters who survive on.....what....rats? If you like to suspend your disbelief totally, you will probably enjoy this film. But if, like me, obvious plot holes spoil the experience you may wish you watched something else.

This movie deserves much more then a 5.2 rating on IMDb. I'm not saying that you will get great dialogs or deep conversations and that's not the point. This is a horror/thriller and so you don't need that. The only thing you need with a horror/thriller is suspense, creepy background sounds, a nasty villain, a lot of screaming and blood. And all that you will get with this movie. The actors were not bad at all, especially the German subterranean psycho played by Klaus Stiglmeier. You will need subtitles for this movie because at the end there is quite a lot of German language. I thought the underground sceneries were perfect for this movie so that you would get the feeling that there is no escape from that weirdo. Great entertainment if you like that kind of movies. Certainly much better then the usual stuff we get in that genre.

My opinion on this movie is kind a selective. Good thing about it is superb directing, scary camera and very good acting. It is as good as in the best horror movies of that kind. So most of the conditions to make a good movie were fulfilled. Still, from my point of view movie is not good for its great downfalls. The greatest one is a pretty bad script full of holes. I am not going to go step by step in naming these holes as I don't wanna spoil your fun. Scenario is also very dry, there are some scary moments mostly due to the clever camera, but the plot is kind of sterile and uniformed. This is because the movie is not involving us on the basis of the clever plot composition, but on the separate scary events. I also found insisting on grouse effects pretty unnecessary. I love European horror movies and among them German very much, but this one looks more like a B class Hollywood movie pattern.