A few flaws but a very entertaining scare fest!

Rating: 8/10 (14 July 2005)

When I saw the trailer for this film at the cinema, I thought it looked quite interesting. But the main reason for watching it was because on the trailer on the TV, it said that the film magazine 'Empire' rated the film five stars. I still have to actually see if this is true or not. And did it deserve five stars? In some cases yes.
The story was a very good one but confusing in some places. Six women go on a caving trip and get trapped in by a rock fall. Nothing out of the ordinary I hear you say. But in this deep and mysterious cave with them are evolved humans, humans that want to kill and eat these women. A thing that I find very strange to see is that the cast are mostly British women, and genuine British women also, not Americans trying to put on an accent. This impressed me quite a lot. But a couple of confusing parts put doubt in my mind a bit whilst watching the movie. Did one of the other women cavers have an affair with Sarah's husband? And what was the whole deal with the chain saying "Live every day"? This seemed to have a big effect on the film in some way, but I couldn't pick it out. But one thing that I do applaud about the film, was the fact that Sarah's dead daughter did not mix with the film too much. I thought that the ending would be that either the deceased daughter would turn out evil in some way, or that she would help her mother escape.
The acting was quite good throughout, apart from a couple of scenes. Especially the scene when Sarah first saw the blood thirsty human, the acting went into a downward direction. But, where the acting failed, the scares succeeded. This film was absolutely petrifying to say the least and well pulled off. The fear that you are trapped in a dark, wet and unknown cave is bad enough, but the addition of murderous humans at every turn really is ghastly. The amount of times I jumped was amazing.
The killers look a lot like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And the fact that they live in the darkness underground, suggests to me that the writer has watched the trilogy too many times. In a few scenes near the end, Sarah has the look of 'Carrie' from the horror movie. I do not know if this was meant to be, but it struck me for a second. Also, the fight scenes were a bit hard to make out as the camera was very shaky and it constantly kept switching angles. This hurt my head a bit. There was quite a poor display of CGI also, especially with the appearance of the bats and when the women were abseiling down the hole. When the credits came up, it said that one of the killers was called Scar. I thought that this was very peculiar indeed, as not once throughout the movie did anyone mention its name.
Overall, this movie was a great movie and well worth watching. But expect to be frightened severely, as this film will hold you and never let go.