Underground (2011)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Some party-hardy friends attend a rave at an abandoned military base at midnight. A couple of them get into a fight with some random a-holes, and in the ensuing chase, our protagonists find themselves underground. And soon they come to realise they’re not alone.

Director Rafael Eisenman (who apparently worked on “Red Shoe Diaries”) and writer Charles Morris Jr. appear to be of the opinion that the world needs another horror film about dopey youngsters at a rave party in an abandoned military base who find themselves trapped underground and beset by nasty mutants. Created by a crazy Nazi scientist, I might add. Yeah, I have a bit of a different view to Mr. Eisenman and Morris about all this.

This lame horror outing did very little for me, being colourful but poorly lit (that’s the problem with colour filters and darkness, they don’t mix well), boringly written (a character actually says ‘We’re all gonna die!’- I kid you not), badly acted, and any filmmaker needs to tread very carefully when included Holocaust or Nazi themes into their film. This film, as far as I’m concerned, didn’t earn the right to bring up such notions.

The central characters are horribly uninteresting and terribly unlikeable. Twenty-something ravers and boozers just don’t do it for me, I’m afraid. Especially when they drink out of a urinal. Why would I care about someone who does that? Who the hell does that? No one, that’s who. Disgusting. I’m sorry, but young people who like to drink, do drugs, and party just aren’t interesting, appealing, or identifiable to me (I’m 32, don’t drink alcohol, and I hate large social gatherings). And can we please do away with simplistic romantic pairings in these films? Oh look, three guys and three girls. Yawn. Couldn’t there at least be a lesbian or two? I also felt that the introductory scenes were a bit confusing and clunky, insofar as everyone’s relation to each other. It took me a little bit to find my bearings.

The film is a hodge-podge of “Catacombs”, “The Hole”, and “Stag Night”, none of which were especially memorable films. In fact, like “Catacombs” (and indeed it is a lot like it), this is a location in search of a movie. And the location in “Catacombs” was a whole lot cooler. The mutants are cool, though, and there’s a nice half torn-off torso, too. But the film still largely sucks.

OVERALL SUMMARY
This did nothing for me, but I’ll openly admit it’s not my type of horror film to begin with. Perhaps it will do more for you.