The Cave (2005)
Caving goes awry, just like in ‘The Descent’. Eddie Cibrian (of ‘Invasion’), Daniel Dae Kim (of ‘Lost’, ‘Crusade’, ‘Angel’ and ‘Hawaii Five-0’), Lena Headey (of ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’) and Piper Perabo (of ‘Covert Affairs’) are among a group of scientists and cave divers who go into a deep cave in the Carpathian mountains.
Nobody knows the difference between bravery and recklessness as they head in. There is techno babble and sonic mapping via waving a magic stick. Everyone laughs at the legends of winged demons until the monsters attack. This isn’t scary. The first three ‘Phantasm’ films were scarier than this.
The orange characters get trapped a mile down and have to get out whilst avoiding parasites and monsters. There is mutation, hollering, perpetually furious shoutier types who need to take the histrionics down a few notches and mindless glassy eyed fools. This had some promise at the start but sadly is reductively ridiculous, absurd and practically pointless.
If you want to see coat hanger thin women and toboggan faced men taking on killer fruit bats or something in a dusty old cave with lots of space and light this is for you. Still waspishness, belligerence and malaise aside this does have a nice downer eerie ending.
Best Lines:
“Won’t be so funny if we end up in a Romanian jail.”
“Respect the cave.”
“They built the church to seal the cave as a display of God’s protective power.”
“European legends always have sad endings.”
“It’s dark, it’s cold and it’s wet.”
“I haven’t seen a hole like this in a long time.”
“We could spend an eternity trying to find a way out, if there even is one.”
“Something’s not right.”
“We ought to find another way.”
“This is the goddam way!”
“There’s nothing human left.”
~
[REC]2 (2009)
I’ve never seen the 2007 '[REC]' but I saw the dreadful US remake ’Quarantine’. A SWAT team and an annoying man enter an apartment building where ‘rabies’ is raging. There is wild banging and screaming indicating it is not rabies. It’s something supernatural. This was boring with irritating teenagers, hysteria, dullness, stupidity starring people undeserving of life and the ending was ridiculous.
Best Lines:
“That man was fine five minutes ago. What virus does this?”
“Something must have gone wrong.”
“Where the hell have they sent us?”
“Stay there, grandma.”
“If this virus got out of here...”
“You think you’re clever? If you were, you’d be running.”