The Cave (2005) - Review

The Cave (2005). Starring Piper Perabo, Morris Chesnut and Leaney Headey.

 One star.

 SPOILERS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON DECEMBER 19, 2013.

 This is one of those movies I wanted to see in the theater because everybody talked about how flipping scary it was. Of course, I didn't make it to Kerasotes Showcase 6 (now AMC). I was too busy. And you know what? I'm glad I didn't spend six bucks to see this movie. I understand the claustrophobic element to scaring the be-Jesus out of most people. That much is clear. What I don't get is how Hollywood thinks that PG-13 is a sure fire bet for any of these films. Not that I don't believe that horror films can be good with such a rating. I've seen horror films with a PG that I love to death (The Gate comes to mind). But a movie such as this suffers from the banal, and worst of all, bad CGI.

 Like I said, this movie plays on peoples' fears of subterranean enclosure. While I openly dislike both this film and its more popular counterpart, The Descent, the thing I will say for this movie is opens with a more interesting premise. Whereas the latter film is just about a bunch of women who (for reasons I have never understood) want to go spelunking, the protagonists of The Cave are archaeologists and have an invested interest in checking out this cavern system. In this case, it has to do with a church once maintained by the Knights Templar in Romania. You know, it's one of those scary churches with all of the bones and shit littered throughout with Byzantine Orthodox artwork as a backdrop? Apparent, the Knights left behind where trying to prevent some type of ancient evil from escaping the caves.

 However, that's where the pros/cons debate between the two movies reverses. The fact is, the scary ass church built in the middle of nowhere should have been a premonition that exploring this cave system is not a good fucking idea. But no, they proceed in true cliched Hollywood fashion. And there's an underground river that they swim through with altered scuba equipment. Following this, we spend the remaining eighty minutes of this movie watching this group bumblefuck around, stumble upon cave monsters and make endless stupid choices therein. There's really no more to it than that. Once again, all completely avoidable. Yeah, I know. No one knew the creatures existed, so they thought there was a more realistic, more grounded explanation for why the church was built there. Further, you're not going to just walk away from potentially the largest cavern system in the world, wasting millions of U.S. taxpayer's dollars. Bullshit. Let's just say the creatures weren't real. What if the church was built as a precaution to keep travelers away from thousands of bodies belonging to plague victims? It never pays to ignore cautionary impediments. Oh yeah, a couple of the spelunkers survive. It turns out one of them actually has some kind of virus from one of the cave monsters. Obviously a setup for a lame-ass sequel that never made it to fruition. Too bad, so sad. At least we got to see Miss Coyote Ugly in some skimpy outfits.