Runtime: 89 minutes
Directed by: Bradley Parker
Starring: Alicia Sanz, Adan Canto, Zach Avery, Chinaza Uche, Will Patton
From: 1inMM Productions
What do you get when you mix The Descent, Harlan County USA, The Boogens, My Bloody Valentine and the Centralia, Pennsylvania coal fires?
Hopefully something better than this.
Those that aren't familiar w/ the story of Centralia, Pennsylvania: Google is the best option for this bizarre tale but in short: in the early 60's the coal in the mines under Centralia were accidentally set on fire and despite attempts to put it out, the fire kept on burning and due to the resultant sinkholes/toxic gases created, the town was eventually abandoned. Creating a horror story out of that is not the worst idea, whether or not it's a creature feature like this was. If only this had more of a budget and better characters... I know for some the biggest sin will be wasting the talents of Will Patton; he only has like 5 or 6 minutes of screentime so unless you are a diehard fan of his...
A lady whose job is to lead people to dangerous locations, she and some dudes who claim to be “doing research” go to an abandoned town in Eastern Kentucky that ceased to exist due to a coal fire... or so the story goes. This lady-Arianne-think of her as a Jordana Brewster type in terms of appearance. She is definitely more competent than the stupid and A-hole guys she's leading to the town; it's a similar story for a supporting woman character who aids the people in the area in trying to prevent scary bipedal creatures from leaving the area.
The dopey characters acting like dumbasses is certainly a problem but its biggest hindrance is a minuscule budget. An “abandoned town” is shown to be buildings from more than 100 years ago in a grass field with no hint of a road or even path to be seen. The monsters are never shown clearly, and it's not done in a way to build suspense. At times it is incredible to see all the steps taken, the contrivances to hide what must have been terrible digital effects; as I saw their terrible attempt at a greenscreen in one scene, the lack of budget must have really hurt them. A shame, as they were able to film in some scenic locations, including a large cave-oddly enough, no mine shafts are actually seen.
It is not completely lacking in scares yet as this hardly has any gore, overall there is no real need to give this a chance-for all the dire choices on Netflix there have to be plenty of random genre efforts that have to be at least a hair better than this. The biggest impact this movie had on me: inspiring the next thing I'll watch. Early on, two of the dumb male characters were arguing with each other on several topics, including “intelligent design”... oh boy. Also, the old canard about the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia was mentioned. There is a real life Kola Borehole but due to a legend told in Finnish propaganda Christian publications (no, really) they “drilled to hell” and what sounded like hellish screams were heard. That lie was spread on American Christian TV stations and there was a tape of those screams... which was actually taken from the Bava movie Baron Blood! Hilarious.
Anyhow, next time will be the 2020 Russian film The Superdeep.
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