Lost In The Dark

Rating: 5/10 (20 August 2006)

What I liked about this film was its simplicity. The claustrophobic feeling of being stuck in the cave had me scared...even more so than the porn level dialogue (the scenes between the women before going into the cave felt as if it were written by someone who'd either never met a woman, or real human for that matter ) that preceded it.
Getting stuck in the cave was almost all you needed to make this into an exciting film...then came the albino bat people. It's not like there was no fun to be mined by their introduction, the problem was simply that the fun was over with ten minutes into it as Marshall's script relied more on the audiences good will than character or film-making prowess (both of which were seemingly on better display in DOG SOLDIERS).
The character of Juno accidentally kills one of her friends, the key here is accidentally...we SEE the accident...we KNOW it was an accident. She didn't do much to try and haul her friend's corpse through the narrow caves to the surface was her only crime, and frankly I could empathize. Yet this was the driving force for the rest of the film...Juno was turned into the bad guy, similar to the Paul Reiser character from Alien's...just without any of the real bad guy motivation.
This alone kind of gave the ending of the film a flat tire that it never recovered from. We were supposed to route for our lead character of Sarah to kill Juno as retribution...but it felt more like a cold-blooded murder. Sarah had lost her husband and daughter at the start of the film...this element has NOTHING to do with the rest of the film save some residual pity she receives the first half of the film. Juno apologizes for not sticking around long after that accident - but what was she to do then? Move in with Sarah? Now that WOULD BE a horror...the overly empathic friend who wouldn't leave.
The film isn't without merits...it just doesn't merit $10.75 at the theater door. It's more of a good late night cable offeringor a discount DVD rental.