Disjointed, incoherent

Rating: 1/10 (7 February 2007)

The first half of the movie was alright. Not great, but alright. But then it falls apart, and succeeds in utterly destroying any coherence with rest of the film.
slight spoilers ahead... yawn... you were warned...
The movie opens with the death of the main protagonist's daughter. At first I thought the movie was about the main character, Sarah. Then it becomes an all female ensemble cast, about female friendship. The friends try their hand at spelunking. The scenic views within the caves were a welcoming touch. The foreboding builds a small bit.
Feelings of claustrophobia could have been built up in some of the characters, a bit more clearly, if this intention was present at all.
However, then it seems the film descends into the ridiculous, with extreme gore and nastiness towards all the characters. What was most galling was that it was a complete U-turn in terms of theme and character sense in the direction of the film. There was an extreme disconnect between first half of the film and the last half. The car crash & the loss of Sarah's daughter at the beginning of the film became completely irrelevant. The acting talents of the cast become wasted, as their character development also become irrelevant and disjointed from the gore-half of the movie. It lost any sense of coherence, and instead became a cruel dismemberment fest of the female characters by "goblin cavemen" rejects from LOTR.
"Suddenly!" goblin men appear. Ugh. If the director or writer is to introduce highly implausible monsters, there should have been some foreshadowing or story mythology added to the scenario to introduce them and make them plausible within the movie. Seems like this part of the movie was hammered into such a tasteless & formulaic turn of events in order to accommodate the horror genre, which became its raison d'etre.
The female characters then turned from "experienced adventurous, independent women" into panicking, back-biting silly idiots running screaming in the dark and falling into pits. -- Who are then eaten alive. Not my cup of tea. I sat through this, disengaged, glancing at other things in my room, hoping it get better. It didn't and I regret watching this movie. If I had bought the DVD, I would have thrown it into the trash after seeing it.
As a man, I am not an extreme feminist, but even I was upset at how venally and cruelly women were taken apart in this film. Thematically, it jumped around, and couldn't decide what it was, nor hold any of the themes that it was building, until it suddenly become just a pure gore fest. In terms of storytelling, what was exceptionally weak was that there was no relevance of the death of protagonist's daughter except for an extremely "tacked on," contrived ending. It's the first time I was moved to write a review, because the current 7 rating is completely undeserved. Just Awful.