- Directed by Neil Marshall
- Written by Neil Marshall
- Stars Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 39 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSGiSZWFOtE
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A group of friends like to go on adventures. When they turn to cave exploring, what could go wrong? Quite a bit as the stress of their situation brings out the best in some and the worst in others. And wow, there is some stress. Really great all around, effects, setting, and acting.
Synopsis
A trio of girls go whitewater rafting, and it looks pretty extreme. On the way home, we get the impression from sideways glances that Sarah‘s husband is having an affair with Juno, but before that goes anywhere, he’s instantly killed in a “Final Destination”-style road accident. Their daughter Jessica is killed as well. Credits roll.
One year later, in the Appalachian Mountains, they arrive at Chatooga National Park. Sarah, Juno, Beth, Rebecca, Sam, and Holly all arrive. Sam and Rebecca are sisters, and Sam is almost done with medical school. Holly is a thrill seeker who is just now meeting the others. They’re here for some caving, but Holly says that stuff’s for tourists. Juno promises otherwise. No one can say anything about family without setting Sarah off; she’s clearly still bothered very much by her loss. By the time morning rolls around, they all have hangovers.
They all drive way out into the country to get to the cave, and Juno leaves the guidebook to the cave in the car; she doesn’t need it. It’s a great big vertical hole in the mountain, straight down. They go down by rope and start walking through huge, dark caves. It all looks very strenuous and claustrophobic.
Sarah gets stuck in a tight spot, and they have to talk her through getting out of it. As they resolve that, there’s a cave-in, so they can’t get back out the way they got in. They know there are other ways out of the cave, except Juno didn’t bring the guidebook. It doesn’t matter, because they didn’t go to the cave system in the book anyway; that was a tourist trap. This cave system is new and no one has ever been down here before.
They slowly cross a huge vertical chasm. Rebecca spots a piton already in place; they aren’t the first to come down here after all, but it looks like it may be a hundred years old. The others make it across fairly quickly. We start seeing a little blame and hostility between Sarah and Juno. On the other side, they find cave paintings of buffalos and maybe a map. We also see that they aren’t alone in the cave. Something drools in the darkness…
Holly thinks she sees daylight and runs until she painfully falls into a hole. She’s badly broken her leg. Sarah hears a baby crying further down the tunnel and sees something humanoid down there; no one else sees anything. Not long after, they find the bones of hundreds of dead animals.
They start to scream, and soon they all see the naked white manlike thing crawling on the ceiling. One of them rips Holly’s throat out. One of them attacks Juno as well, but she mages to kill hers— and then Beth as well, by accident. Sam and Rebecca get separated from the others.
Sarah gets knocked out and when she awakens, she’s alone except for a camera with infrared imaging. She watches a gang of the creatures eat Holly’s remains. Sarah finds Beth, who isn’t quite dead yet; Beth warns Sarah to watch out for Juno. She even tells Sarah about Juno’s affair with her dead husband before she dies for real this time.
The creatures seem to be blind, but they have other senses. Especially when Sam’s watch alarm goes off. Sam and Rebecca soon meet up with Juno again. Sam explains medically what these creatures are. They’ve evolved down here. They are completely blind, but move by sound and possibly echolocation like bats have. Still, they bring food from the surface, so all they have to do is follow them to the exit.
After helping Beth die, Sarah gets chased by one of the monsters until she falls into a pit of blood. Another of the monsters literally stands on top of her while she hides silently.
Juno runs into a whole room full of the creatures, and everyone panics in all directions at once. Sami dies. Rebecca follows.
Juno runs into Sarah, who isn’t looking happy. She asks about Beth, and Juno just says she didn’t make it. Sarah knows she’s lying. They continue on through the endless caves, killing three more creatures. Sarah lets Juno know that she knows about the affair, and then stabs her in the leg to make her an easier catch for the creatures. Sarah then runs off alone, leaving Juno to be eaten by a dozen of the cave-people. You don’t have to be the fastest, just don’t be the slowest, as the saying goes.
Sarah falls into a hole and when she wakes up, she finds an opening to the outside world. She climbs up a mountain of bones to get to the surface. She runs through the forest toward the cars and drives several miles away before stopping for a good cry.
No, wait— that was just a dream. She’s still in the cave in the dark. A cruel trick by the movie makers.
Commentary
How do these people know each other with such different accents? There’s no way they all grew up together.
I like that there’s nothing supernatural here; the monsters are simply vampire-like carnivorous cavemen that have evolved right there in those caves. They are really neat-looking too, a mixture of Nosferatu and Gollum.
There were no actual caves filmed in this movie; they are ALL sets. The bone-setting scene is cringeworthy and nasty, but that’s really just the beginning of the gore in this film. There are whole caverns filled with bodies.
Overall, the big thing here is the claustrophobic sets. The creatures are excellent, but the movie would still have been good even without the monsters. Just the caving gone bad would have done it for me, but then to be hunted by monsters and each other? Nice!