Dead Mine

In an isolated island in Indonesia, an expedition is apparently seeking the legendary Yamashita's Gold. Out of the blue, they are attacked and seek refugee in an abandoned Japanese bunker. Soon they discover that the place was a secret laboratory in the World War II where the prisoners were guinea pig in weird experiments. Further, they are trapped inside with strong and resistant creatures created by these experiments. Will they succeed to escape from the dead mine?

I really do not understand how producers (HBO, not Sci-Fi) can spend their money in garbage like that. The story is a terrible rip-off of "The Descent" and I believe anyone who read it would have at least some doubts to make a movie. The dialogs are extremely poor and the motive of the expedition is a mess. Who are the guys that shoot the expedition? How the Japanese survivor had eaten and drunken along all those years trapped in the bunker with the creatures? How someone could inject a rusted syringe with a sixty and something year-old substance in another person with the intention of healing him? The group splitting to be more easily killed is one annoying clichés. The awful lack of conclusion seems to show the intention of a sequel, meaning more wasted money. Last but not the least; the acting is more dreadful than the creatures. My vole is two.

Title (Brazil): "Mina Abandonada" ("Abandoned Mine")

I wanted to watch a horror movie yesterday and after a quick search I chose Dead Mine. Well,the "horror in a mine" concept is nothing rare so I didn't expect to encounter something new plot wise to begin with. What I was expecting to see in an Indonesian B-movie like this were some nice killing scenes and probably some scary or intense moments. Also, most horror B-movies nowadays usually make up for their "bad" plot with lots of blood and gore but that's not the case here. This movie isn't much scary either. Even at moments that the protagonists are hunted down and the watcher should feel the intensity of it the director just failed to make it happen.

Coming to the story now, I have to say it was not that bad.It actually had more potential than it delivered if I can say that. Of course, there are cliché characters placed here and there but it happens to most movies(I even found myself liking the character of Warren's gf) .The plot is quite good at first(not something entirely fresh but decent) and seems like it might lead somewhere good. Still the bad pace, the lack of attention to detail and the horrible 15-20 last mins of the movie where the story goes off track ruin the effort made before.

I know that what I've said so far will probably make you not wanting to watch this movie at all but its not entirely unwatchable. It's still better than many movies out there. So if you like horror movies and got nothing else to watch give it a try. It will be a decent one-time watch, though the last part of the movie might leave you with a bad aftertaste like in my case.

By now we are used to seeing all sorts of horrors coming to us from Asia, but they all had one thing in common, they were seriously messed up, with rare exceptions. Dead Mine, an Indonesian medium budget movie takes an almost textbook approach to storytelling, and while graphic violence is present, it isn't sick or anything, but just as I said more classically bloody that we are used to seeing in American horrors. The movie itself is nothing special, but the exotic locations,cast and story make up for that. The director Steven Sheil managed to make the movie look really good, with some innovative camera angles and relatively suspenseful scenes, sacrificing reality for looks. Although when the movie's about zombies, Second World War and strange things lurking in the depths of the mine, reality discussion is really not a valid one.

An expedition led by a very wealthy, I guess scientist, called Price has finally found the thing they were looking for in Indonesia, an old abandoned bunker from WW 2. Price, accompanied by his girlfriend, a Japanese journalist on a quest to find out more about the war and a bunch of mercenaries in charge of their safety, decides to take a closer look. As soon as he said it, they were attacked by a local gang and forced to find shelter in the mine that has been converted into a bunker. After the cave in, they find themselves trapped in the mine with only one option, to push forward, into the darkness. What they don't know is that the mine is not abandoned, but far from it...

Fascination by Nazi zombies is something that has kept filmmakers in Europe occupied for quite some time, but now we are seeing this trend in Asia with Japans soldiers. While the directing was good and they managed to make Dead Mine look visually great, the story and the dialogue needs to be better. The thing that I missed the most is the suspense building up as they go deeper and deeper into the mine... Check out Dead Snow, a movie with a similar subject if you liked Dead Mine. It's not the best movie out there, but it's worth a watch...

Movie recommendations www.Rabbit-Reviews.com - Only movies worth watching

I wish I could say this review contained spoilers because it would suggest there was something to spoil about this film. However, it was so abject that the director and assembeld cast have already done that for you. I won't bore you with the details of the risible plot because there are plenty of other reviewers who have done that. What they have not told you is that this film is a cheat. Yes a cheat. I don't care if you haven't paid a penny to watch it, if you watch it to the end, as I stupidly did, it will cheat you out of almost two hours of your life. You know that when a horror film starts out with a group of six, the monsters/ aliens/ zombies/ evil incarnations et al will pick them off one by one. Par for the course. Except in the final scene, we have one character turned into a zombie/ living dead figure another who submerges into a lake to escape the ridiculous Samurai warriors and a plaintive girl struggling up a beach with the warriors emerging behind her and.........roll the credits. Seriously, as the warriors approach her, it goes to black screen and then credits. So what happened to our hero who dived into the lake, the zombified character and the girl? Don't know. I am only writing this because I feel so angry that the film didn't even offer a cop-out ending. There wasn't even an ending! Did they run out of money? Did they become as bored as the rest of us and thought "Hey what, y'know everyone let's call it a wrap because there's a great cocktail bar near here and it's gotta be more fun than doing this." Cheats!

I wouldn't watch Dead Mine in the theater but for on television it's okay I guess. And by okay I mean it just passes, because it's still an average movie. The story was promising but at the end I thought it was poorly executed. For example when you're on the run for evil murderers you don't stop to watch how they butcher somebody, you just keep running. It's small mistakes like that that will bring the movie down. The actors are also not Oscar winners. It's pretty lame sometimes. But the story is still watchable if you have an open mind and are not too critical. With a bit more effort and better actors the movie could have been better but I guess they didn't have the budget for that.