Slow but good

Rating: 6/10 (7 October 2006)

Although I am a movie lover and resident of the UK, I have had hardly any experience with British movies. In fact the only other British horror film I had watched before this was The Creep and that was an unpleasant experience best not discussed!
However I picked this up on Friday night at Morrisons and after reading the plot outline decided it was worth the £5.99 price tag. 40 minutes after pressing play I was thinking I had made a huge mistake, with the exception of a sudden impalement of a child passenger there had been virtually no horror content whatsoever!
The movie does improve however, the tension it creates is very effective and the eerie setting of the caves is an instant horror success! The enemies are stunningly vicious and imaginative although after their introduction there is little in the way of terror from these mutilated monsters just bloody violence.
This movie has two major flaws in my opinion.
Firstly the characters are given little in the way of character development. Although certainly likable, with the exception of Sarah, the main character and Juno we are never given any real insight into their personality and they become little more than a mass of people to be killed throughout the movie.
Secondly I found it rather shocking and disappointing that Sarah injured and then left Juno to die at the hands of the monsters. It is true that she accidentally killed and then left Beth to die but the cold murder after the two had fought together was a major let down at the end. This is explained however by the ending.
The ending is a little confusing to be honest it was only afterwards I realised what it meant. Basically the birthday scenes throughout the movie indicate that Sarah is going mad, at the end she has completed her descent into madness. Considering this I guess whether or not she got out is pretty irrelevant but I would assume that she is supposed to have died in there. So not a happy ending but come on this is horror!
Overall this movie is pretty good and well worth a watch, it is certainly not on my list of favourites but a fun horror movie.