Mine Games

A group of college graduate friends on a getaway weekend trip. Time for fun and drinking. As the van breaks down, it's a horror film as they always do, the troupe hoofs it to the nearby cabin to rest up. Upon discovering a nearby mine, the group explores. Spelunking discoveries become eerily ominous. Every trip back to the cabin to regroup provides no relief as does each trip back into the mine. Tension builds steadily throughout, the plot seems thin and weak. Just when you've got it figured out, everything changes. Break the cycle or else. Overall, well thought out and executed. People can always compare Mine Games to this and that but this dig is worth it...

A bunch of friends on vacation in the country discover a disused mine and find something most strange down in its depths.

It starts off in conventional fashion, pretty looking youngsters head off to a large cabin in the woods and after nearly running someone down in the road, they arrive at their destination but nothing is as it seems. The story then spins into another dimension, cribbing from better movies like Triangle and Identity, only the screenplay isn't strong enough to make a success of it, even confusing itself in the process.

Things aren't helped by director and co-writer Richard Gray padding out the movie to meet the required run time to call it a feature length production. In truth there just isn't enough material here to extend beyond a one hour Twilight Zone episode, better editing and a better screenplay was definitely needed here. Gray over stretching his ambitions somewhat.

The cast of up coming Hollywood starlets give a mixed bunch of performances, while the low budget is often evident. Neither of these things, though, hurt the film as much as the aforementioned issues. There's a modicum of interest value here for those who like the films already mentioned above, but it's not a comfortable recommendation at all. 4/10

There are just so many things wrong with Mine Games from the beginning to the very last second. I must admit that the camera-work was excellent, location was fitting and the premise itself is intriguing but everything else in this production is extremely inadvertent and I found myself rolling my eyes continuously. The script is weak and bland, every cliché you could possibly think of was present, the decisions the characters made were not just "typical horror movie bad decisions that people make when they're scared and not thinking straight" kind of decisions, they were just decisions that would specifically keep the movie from stopping in its own tracks. In the end, there was literally not one specification on why anything had happened. Not a trace of resolution or meaning for any of it. I haven't seen a movie with this amount of carelessness and large quantity of plot holes in a while. If you look at my other reviews, you'll see that I'm extremely generous when it comes to rating films, probably TOO generous. But this.... this truly needed a substantial amount of work in so many areas. I would not go as far to say this is a terrible movie because you can tell that director Richard Gray tried to get creative and have some fun with this so I do respect that he tried to create something unique in such a repetitive world of film. It just really needed so much work to be considered good. It upsets me that someone didn't tell this guy about all these silly and avoidable mistakes that he was making throughout the course of the pre-production and production of this film. This could have been something special but it ended up being a messy, negligent, and heedless attempt. Would recommend to those who enjoy movies based PURELY on the entertainment factor and nothing more. I do not recommend you watch this if you cringe at plot holes, clichés, and absent resolutions.

I was burning through some repetitive work with this movie on in the background. I had low expectations, and then IceMan showed up, and then (spoiler) there were some nice boobs which ticked off a checkbox for making a good bad-horror movie. The characters were a bit whack and irrational, but how else are you going to write them into constantly returning to an abandoned mine. There's a beautiful lake nearby, but they're like "Hey, let's go back to the mine and drink more PBR." They try to add some un-reliable narration by introducing a trivial amount of drugs. I was like, "Is that ALL you're going to take? Can you even get buzzed from a couple Tall-Boys?" Standard cookie-cutter characters, but one was British this time, and that was never really explained. Was that a fake accent? It was nice to see the story almost work, but the ending left a lot of unanswered questions, like, "Why is this happening at all in the first place?", and "Why don't they just leave? It's a nice day." All in all, it's kind of like a more enjoyable version of "The Hole", combined with "Vivarium" or something.

This one didn't seem as bad as some other reviewers would indicate. I didn't have a lot of complaints about it. I like the time loop / flashback or whatever type movies as long as they don't have a lot of flaws.

One of my favorites along those lines was Triangle

+1 Star for Putting some Nudity in where there should be some nudity.

-1 Star For Not really having much at all to do with a 'Mine'. I mean it could have just as easily been called 'The Cabin In The Woods' but I think that title has also been used a few times!!!!

5/10