The Cave Year: 2005 Director: Bruce Hunt Written by: Michael Steinberg, Tegan West Threat: Mutants Weapon of Choice: Fire Based upon: none Color/B&W/3D: Color Language: English Country of Origin: USA IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
As punishment for something that I can't even remember now, Rish declared that I was to be the one to watch The Cave. I was sort of okay with that then, and I'm still okay with it now. At least I've managed to dodge being the one to have to watch The Watcher all these years.
A cave has been found in the remote Carpathians. It is filled with water though, so the best cave-diving team in the world is brought in for the occasion. They are the normal mix of eclectic characters that we've encountered in any number of adventure films. What waits for them in the cave, however, is much more dangerous than they could have counted on. Bissfully unaware, they enter anyway and are soon locked in by a cave-in behind them. Can they get out again?
The premise isn't terribly new and the ideas are all pretty old. What they have though that is new is that it is now possible to make one of these movies on a very small budget and still manage to pull off pretty good creature effects and sets, thus making them easier to watch.
At the heart of the movie is the kind of unreliable character that makes these movies fun to watch. Is he trying to steer them down the right path, or is he taking them further into danger? This is the same kind of question that makes so many science fiction movies work so well. In this case, it is exactly what made me like the movie instead of getting bored by it. I'm not really the spelunking type. But my fear of dark enclosed places probably explains that.
The cast is pretty good. I like Piper Perabo, but she's about the only one I recognized. Probably more my fault than theirs.
There isn't a whole lot to recommend this one, but I still found myself enjoying it more than I expected to. This stands out a little from a lot of the recent horror flicks, going back to the basic monster flick and doing so relatively intelligently. There was one technical detail that bothered me, but they got past it pretty quickly and I didn't even think of it again until I saw a claim on the IMDb that they kept a professional diver around to make sure they got the details right. Even so, the movie is mostly worth the time spent.
Posted: March 23, 2006

Rish's Reviews
I just saw this. Though tyranist's right, just from the trailer, I never had any intention of giving this one a shot.
What was notable to me at the time was that the trailer was a big, dark, mysterious couple of minutes, showing people spelunking and diving, running, swimming, and screaming, while something unknown (i.e. we did not see it) came at them out of the blackness . . . THEN, at the very last second of the trailer, the monster was shown. I just don't get it.
It's fairly certain that, faced with the choice between a horror movie and an action movie, most audiences would prefer Action. So, this was shot and edited to be a lot more Action-oriented, with fueding musclemen, daring rescues and/or fights, and glossy bloodless violence.
I wonder if it would have been a better movie if they had tried to make us like them and then turned on the terror, as a certain other 2005 cave monster flick did.
I too like what's her name, Piper Perabo. I have no valid reason to, though.
I have little to say about the film itself. The Cave wasn’t a great movie by any stretch, but it was well-executed, with interesting monsters, and moved along at a pretty entertaining pace.
It’s hard not to compare it to The Descent, which came out last year, but after tyranist had done his own review of this movie. As far as comparisons go, The Cave paled next to Descent in nearly every single way . . . except the ending, which I hated (The Descent’s, that is).
The Cave’s ending, though, is really interesting.* Since it's no longer a new movie, can I really “spoil” this one?
At the end of the film, just a couple of people make it out of the cave, having killed off a handful of the monsters, but the real victory being that they escaped with their lives. But . . . it is revealed, that the girl scientist (Lena Headey) has been infected with the cave monster parasite, and she eludes our hero amid the crowds of unknowing (and potentially- infectable) people in the city.
The End.
So, here we are: at the gateway to a really, really cool movie. Our hero, along with anyone else he can get to believe him (a group of eager scientists, I would imagine, maybe some old military buddies), has to track down and stop this woman before she can spread her tainted DNA to the populace of Venice (or Paris, or New York, or Albuquerque, wherever they want to set it), turning the whole lot into flesh-hungry, devolving, plague-spreading monsters. Our hero doesn’t want the soldiers to kill her, however, because he’s fallen in love with her.
Holy Stephen King circa 1978, I would LOVE to see that movie. Probably never gonna happen, though, is it?
I'd Recommend It To: Hey, The Cave's not a BAD film. It's just not a really good one. If it sounds up your alley (even though I have now ruined the ending), give it a rent.
*As I mentioned in another recent review, a friend of mine often complains that many horror movies end precisely where he would like them to begin (Day of the Dead, for example, or Gothika, or 28 Days Later). I’d really like for him to see The Cave and listen to him rant.
Posted: January 13, 2007

Total Skulls: 11

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?