The Cave

The Cave (2005)

Runtime: 97 minutes

Directed by: Bruce Hunt

Starring: Cole Hauser, Morris Chestnut, Eddie Cibrian, Lena Headley, Piper Perabo

From: Screen Gems

I know, I wasn't planning on watching this film until I saw that it was on the Encore channel Wednesday night, but I figured that I should as I have been interested in watching it since it originally came out. No kidding. It was about time I saw it, right? Why not do it on an HD channel? As sometimes happen, quite similar movies come out at around the same time and it happened here with this film and another cave horror flick, The Descent. I saw that already and you can read that review here.

To steal the plot description from the IMDb: “Decades after a rock church in communist Romania's Carpathians caved when an expedition caused a landslide and buried everyone, Dr. Nicolai's scientific team exploring the associated Templar Knights monster fighting-legend discovers a deep, flooded cave system and hires the brothers Jack and Tyler's brilliant divers team to explore it. Another explosion traps them, after finding a mysterious parasite turning all species carnivore, and later an independently evolved predator species...”

There's actually not too much to say about this film. Unlike with The Descent, this movie has paper-thin characters, a lame stupid story and while it tells you that the scientific team is oh so great, in the movie they act like buffoons who can't even get along with each other. 

There's the old adage of “show vs. tell” where it would have been better if the movie would have SHOWN them being great rather than them TELLING us they're great, then when they don't do anything to show that they are proficient at their job, it's just laughable and embarrassing. Then, the creatures just look silly and are CGI creatures and aren't like what you got in The Descent, where you have strong characters, tense situations, claustrophobia (you don't have tense situations or claustrophobia here, where the caves are unrealistically well-lit) and the creatures look good.

As other people have noted, the movie is similar to Sanctum; not only does it concern underwater caves, but the characters are also bad and paper-thin and they acted like total clowns when we are told they are awesome. I saw it on the big screen and the images looked nice but that was about it. You can read that review here.

In short, never see this movie and stick with watching The Descent.

I'll be back Sunday night where I'll review two of the four Oscar-nominated Best Pictures I'll be seeing on Saturday that I haven't seen before and Monday will be the other two. It'll likely be in order so it'll be Nebraska and Captain Phillips then Her and American Hustle but that isn't for certain.