The Cave: Review By B. Alan Orange

Okay. What do you want to know? Do you want me to tell you about the new end-of-Summer Cole Hauser Rubber Monster fest THE CAVE? Or do you want to hear about this new drinking game based on an old classic?

What’s that? I can’t hear you…

All right, all right. Calm down. The Cave. It’s a B monster movie, straight up. A lean mean fighting machine of funk and rubber cement that clocks in at about an hour and forty minutes. Is it any good? I’ve seen better. Seriously. It’s like a retrofitted Pitch Black minus Dick Riddick and his brooding demeanor. Its Alien in a sinking pit of water and stalagmites. It’s an inch or two away from premiering on the Sci-Fi channel. But its fun. And I was never bored.

Sitting in my chair, the theater lights fading to black, I just wanted to take a nap. I hadn’t gotten much sleep due to working the graveyard shift at my other job and having my car break down. So, I figured if the movie didn’t come out swinging, I’d roll over and catch some shuteye. But the damn, cheap thing wouldn’t let me. It nuzzled me in its dark shadows like a newborn infant, ready to squirt breast milk all over my face. My mouth open wide, I swallowed it all. Even though it was kind of warm, and didn’t taste that great, it still filled my insatiable need to watch something. Not extraordinary. Not out of the ordinary. I wouldn’t suggest swiping your credit card through the automated ticket machine to gain access, but if you came across its evil ways on cable, late at night, you wouldn’t be disappointed. Put simply, its the second billed Drive-In feature of 2005.

Sit back, relax, and pop a cold one. You’re going to need it. Maybe even two. What’s the film about? Well, it’s the Mid-70s and some Romanians go into this hillside church with hopes of finding a stash of riches. They instead stumble upon a huge cavernous maw that runs deep into the earth. They all fall in. And then some crazy noise on the soundtrack eats them in streaks of black flash attacks. I assumed we’d see a brief glimpse of the sticky winged beast that is promised in the trailer. Uh-uh. Apparently, that thing doesn’t exist yet.

Anyway, we then cut to the present and some philanthropist stumbles upon the long buried cave. And he finds a pair of shoes, the only thing left of the Victims that have since traveled through the underground tunnels. This struck me as strange, because there’s no sign of bones, clothes, or anything else. I guess, whatever horrifying atrocity lives up inside this earthly fissure doesn’t have an appetite for stinky leather boots.

A master spelunking team lead by Cole Hauser soon arrives on the scene to explore the Cave, and we are treated to about thirty minutes of them setting up camp and testing sonar equipment. Remember the boring first hour of Alien vs. Predator? It’s along those lines. There’s some blurry splashing in water, and a lot of quick cuts that are likely to give you a headache. It takes a few moments to get into the action. But once it starts, things move at a breakneck speed.

As per the norm, the team is picked off one by one in brutal fashion. There are quite a few of these faceless fecks stationed underneath the ground. It’s like watching a herd of cattle when our team first arrives and unloads itself from the plane. We can almost immediately point out which ones are going to be dragged off screen first. This staging of a kill can go two ways. It’ll be boring, or it will be exciting. Well, I was never on the edge of my seat, but I didn’t mind the carnage, either. There’s some pretty decent bloodletting shown on screen. Its PG-13 bloodletting, though. So you know its not as good as it could have been. There’s no real gore to speak of.

The origin of the Cave Monsters is unique enough to make this thing a tad bit refreshing, but there’s always the lingering stink of retro-vertigo. When it comes down to it, its pretty stupid.

This being a horror movie, it lends itself pretty easily to Film Theory and its stated undercurrent of themes. So, that said, yeah, the movie’s really about nothing more than the Female Vagina and all the horrible things that go with diving headfirst into it. There are a lot of crevasses to get stuck in. There are monsters. Emotions change due to parasites found in the water. People change. People die. New life is born. And there are some scary albino moles buried deep inside it. Yup, sounds like the last vagina I stuck my nose in. I’m glad someone could throw it on screen. It gives me nightmares thinking about it. In that respect, it’s pretty effective.

As a straight up monster movie, it’s mearly watchable. It does nothing new. It breaks no new ground. Watch it. Enjoy it. Just don’t over analyze the thing and you’ll be all right.

It’s a monster movie after all.

Now, about that Drinking Game. This is a good one…

Whoops, I’m sorry. I’m out of time.