Better than average

Rating: 6/10 (27 January 2007)

This is an uncharacteristically engaging horror flick, though the most interesting sequences have nothing to do with the carnivorous, mutant humanoids the adventurous women encounter in the depths of the cave they explore. The hazards the women face as spelunkers navigating the labyrinthine caverns are actually more engaging than the terror sequences involving the monsters.
Then there is the subplot of the apparent affair one friend had with another's husband. Like many other horror flicks, an story strand that could have made for an intriguing plot element is never developed, and apparently tidily resolved by one woman's death at the hands of another.
The film certainly serves up a fair share of scares, as was its intent, but the flaws hold it back from being the true classic it could have been, the mishandled subplot being one of those flaws. And the makers of this film would have you believe that creatures that have evolved to hunt and survive in darkness would lose all of their senses except for their hearing--finding prey by echo location. While the blindness is perfectly logical, any suspension of disbelief is shattered when one creature crawls over top of two women huddled in the dark and doesn't know they're there. Preposterous. I suppose a subterranean existence in a 52-degree habitat of darkness wrecked the creatures' sense of smell and touch. Another creature crouches with its hand planted on the head of another woman and doesn't realize it. Yes, the warm skull of a human can apparently be easily mistaken for a rock.
I enjoyed this film as being better than the average horror flick, but, honestly, that's really not saying much these days. If you like this sort of thing and can look past plot flaws and elements that just don't follow logic, this is a scary pulse-pounder.