Metacritic-Rezensionen

It's increasingly hard to work up a fright on the screen these days, but even if The Cave doesn't exactly terrify, it's fun and looks great.

Despite the striking underwater photography and production values, much of this feels like Alien: Stalagmite Edition. But if it isn't original, The Cave does demonstrate that you can always elevate threadbare material by keeping your ambitions modest.

It's not original, but unlike some of this summer's movies (such as The Island and Stealth), The Cave knows its place. Its job is to deliver a few jolty thrills and a couple of laughs and wrap things up before it starts to get too dumb.

"Alien" redux.

Refreshing strokes of science-fact in the early sections give way to action strictly from the Ridley Scott-James Cameron playbook, but without a powerful helmer behind the camera or a memorable cast in front.

The writers supply character traits that seem to point toward a pay-off but never reach one. People all end up as tight-lipped, indistinguishable automatons who plummet 50 feet down jagged rocks with scarcely a scratch.

The screenplay is thin, the dialogue lacks nuance and the acting is often laughable.

A bottomless pit of lame characters, horror-film cliches and improbable monsters.

The utter lack of tension or suspense is as dumbfounding as Hunt's blender approach to editing, which purees action scenes into incoherent mashes of image confetti.

Not only is the film dreadfully dull: every time something potentially exciting does occur, the scenes are so muddled and chaotic that it is impossible to make out what is happening.