In 2005, the horror genre was rocked by one of the finest films of the decade. Using its location of unexplored cave to trap its unsuspecting characters in, it then unleashed blind, flesh-eating beasts upon them as they vainly sought a route back to the surface. Not many films had managed to utilise its surroundings to such panic-inducing effect as this instant classic, and the gnawing fear of claustrophobia managed to ravage our senses long before the creatures even made their ferocious appearance.
The good news for us is that that film was Neil Marshall’s uncomprising The Descent; however, the bad news for anyone currently reading this sentence is that this isn’t actually a review for that movie. No, this is a review for that other 2005 cave monster movie, The Cave, whose only real defining feature is that it does everything wrong that Marshall’s movie does right. While it seems a little unfair to take a movie apart mostly by comparing it repeatedly to something infinitely better, I guess I’m willing to sink to very low depths…
High in the Carpathian mountain, a group of professional divers arrive to aid Dr. Nicolai as they evacuate the site of a remote, former abbey, only to find a vast, unexplored cave system located underneath. Led by brothers Jack and Tyler McAllister, the close-knit team descend into the hole, along with Nicolai, his associate Dr. Kathryn Jennings and their cameraman, Alex Kim, in order to do some exploring of an undiscovered ecosystem that could potentially lurk beneath their feet. However, due to a prologue that was set thirty years earlier, we already know that a new ecosystem exists beneath the church when a team of British and Soviet plunders attempted to raid the place during the Cold War and met a predictably gruesome end.
But as this film isn’t about them, we can already guess that something horrible happened to the group in the dark, and as this new group sets up state of the art lighting and tech to map the place out, vast, winged predators are lurking somewhere in the murk waiting to pounce. After the first of their number is claimed by large, gnashing teeth, a rockfall occurs that seals them off from the exit in the abbey but realising that the only way out might be through (assuming that there even is a way out), the hunted band push further into the abyss hoping that every underground current and every gust of air is a signpost to their exit.
But while getting eaten alive by giant, hulking skeleton/bats sounds like a pretty ghastly way to go, these creatures come with a pretty worrying side effect. Even receiving so much as a wound from these beasts come with some pretty gnarly results that go far deeper than just a painful nibble or a scratch. With their numbers dropping like a politician’s approval record, can this trapped smattering of divers and scientists stay out of the food chain long enough to find a way back to the surface – and even if they do, will they still technically be themselves?
Numerous similarities to the vastly superior Descent aside, The Cave literally always seemed doomed to fail. Even if the Crawlers from Marshall’s modern masterpiece had hogged all the cave action during a different year, Bruce Hunt’s derivative creature feature seems reluctant to try and carve it’s own identity, and is merely content to deliver reheated servings from other films where drooling beasties loiter in the shadows. For a start, you can’t have spikey monsters stalking humans with superior (if ineffectual) tech without thinking of Aliens, but we’ll give The Cave a pass on that one as roughly 85% of all monster movies released after 1986 owe a gargantuan debt to James Cameron’s classic. However, somewhat less easy to forgive is a subplot that reveals that the janky skull-bats were once human and their bite screws up human genetics to gradually transform you into one of them. While this could have been a potentially gnarly detail that could have taken us into the realms of body horror, matters are dulled even further when you realise that it’s also the exact same twist from Peter Hyams’ 90s beast feast, The Relic.
Speaking of comparing The Cave unfavourably to better movies, once you line up The Descent, it’s failings become far easier to explain. While the British movie takes a no holds barred approach to its scares and violence and fully embraces the dark as a valuable tool, The Cave instead continuously pulls its punches with a PG-13 rating and delivers an underground playground that’s suspiciously well-lit. To give due where it’s deserved, the cave sets are admittedly impressive, but the fact that it’s so lavishly illuminated means you lose even more of a sinister atmosphere, and the movie also edits its attack sequences by using that cutting style that suggests a rabid hamster was plonked in front of an Avid, which renders all of the attack scenes virtually unwatchable.
While the monster designs are fairly cool, it’s further undone by the fact that all of its characters are not much more than glorified cardboard cutouts who spout generic dialogue and are virtually impossible to tell apart once the editing ramps up. Maybe you could forgive Cole Hauser for falling back on the same intense charactization he used in Pitch Black, primarily because he’s fought flying, echolocation using monsters before, and Piper Perabo gives decent pluck – but everyone else, including Morris Chestnut and Lena Headey, is content to deliver one-note performances that drain the life out of the flick like an unplugged bath.
Again, if we go back to the Descent well, we find that we can drink deeply from the various interactions between all the various characters that enrich the experience. Their vulnerabilities, their issues with one another and how their ordeal changes their friendship at its core means that when the Crawlers manage to kill one of their number, you feel it. However, whenever the beasties manage to sink their teeth in the one-dimensional cast of The Cave, I was half-expecting them to spit them out due to the lack of substance they so obviously contain.
Anyone in the mood for an undemanding monster mash that comes with slick production values, but not a single original idea, may find searching The Cave worthy of some basic fun. However, if you want a cavern-set, insanely intense frightener with good characters, truly terrifying creatures and full-on gore, that also debuted in 2005, a trip to the superior deaths of the The Descent is genuinely the route to take.
Short changing itself at every turn, The Cave’s greatest mistake is trading in genuine scares for a slick canvas. But while avid monster-philes may enjoy the creature designs (“They freakin’ fly!!!”), those wanting something more substantial will have to dig a little deeper…
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