The Mine

I gave this a 6 because the acting was amazing for a low budget film. There wasn't a lot of high tech or amazing graphics...but the acting was good and the twist was good. So yeah - give it a shot!

I love horror movies and honestly, I'll give almost anything a chance which means I have watched some truly awful movies. Abandoned Mine is definitely not even a candidate for that list. It's not a great movie, but it's far from terrible. I felt invested enough to continue watching until the very end.

Sure, it's cliché. But I think the movie goes out of its way to acknowledge that. It has a generic title. It takes place on Halloween. The characters tell a scary story in front of the haunted, abandoned, so-scary-oh-god-no mine about its past on the not quite 100 year anniversary of the tragedy that caused it to be haunted. So, I don't think the movie's really trying to take itself all that seriously.

The actors are actually fairly strong for a movie like this. Alexa Vega is always a treat and though she's playing the female character who's afraid of everything, it's hardly ever grating which takes talent. Reiley McClendon straddles the line between jerk and jerkily charming for most of the movie. Adam Hendershott plays a generic, ex-jock character and does it well though his freak out at one point is actually quite good. Charan Prabhakar plays a character that is a stereotype but is also very aware of that; his deadpan delivery of some of the more outlandish lines really sells the character as the best thing about the movie for me. Then there's Saige Thompson. She's not a bad actress but she's definitely the weakest of the group, her big, dramatic moment being the worst in the film.

The main thing the movie does wrong is abandon the majority of its ambiguity near the very end causing it to lose whatever originality it had.

It's hard for older persons such as myself to enjoy teen movies. The real problem as I see it for The Mine is that these teens are not 14 but more like 18, and one has just done pre-med, implying she's intelligent. Her excuse is that she's still in love with the lead bloke. The love triangle is actually quite adult and sweet. The story, basically, is pretty solid and nouveau, but it would have made way more sense for theses kids to have been 12. Now that would have made this movie a work of genius. They decide to party at Halloween outside an abandoned mine, one that is known to be traitorous, and one where many have met misfortune or just disappeared over the last 100 years. So obviously it's a dangerous mine. First problem. Why then is there barely a sign or proper seal to prevent entry to the mine? Second problem. Why are these kids out in the wilderness without checking the weather forecast? Third problem. Why do they agree to enter the mine rather than go back to their car when a thunderstorm strikes? At least they agree, sensibly, to only go in as far as necessary to be out of the rain. Fourth problem. Why do they agree to descend further into the mine just because their idiot lead bloke thinks it would be a hoot? One of the girls appears to be on serious anxiety medication for a start, and she's the med student, and she's first to go down! Fifth problem. How is it they are so stupid as to immediately find themselves, all of them, stuck done a vertical entrance shaft? OK, it's a teen movie, and we the suffering public have to put up with teen movie after teen movie where teens are almost always painted as idiots. Why there is no outcry against this trend I'll never know. Oddly, from here on it actually gets a lot better. The twists and turns of the mine are actually quite interesting, well lit and designed. I didn't find it claustrophobic down there. The filming is actually quite good. If you make it to the last third of the movie the story actually reaches a level of something quite profound for a teen movie. I was actually really glad I got through the cringes at the beginning. I'd even go so far as to wish the filmmakers well and assure them that The Mine was sufficiently impressive for me to look up what else they've done. Good luck to all concerned. A pretty good effort, but please spend longer when next you write your lead in.

And it's pretty clear from the initial scene that this is a B movie all the way. Though the rating should give it away with only a PG-13. In my experience, new movies with high budgets tend to go in for gore, which means an R rating. However, I love B movies and the hokiness that comes with them (and find fear is not based on disgust), so I gave this one a try. The overall movie was decent to be sure. There were the typical stereotypes (dumb jock, cool jock, comical Indian, dumb blond, smart blond with short hair) and they were done well-ish. Though I will admit to finding every joke made at the expense of the Indian guy a bit much within the first 5 minutes of his appearance.

The real problem was in plot development. It was one of those where the writers clearly were unsure how to end the film after they gave an actually well done and surprising twist. They do play with time so separate events overlap at the end so you get numerous perspectives and that was really well done and entertaining. But the plot itself just sort of ended without a nice tie up. If that doesn't bug you, then give this one a try. However, I will warn you that you ought to keep the remote handy for fast forwarding in the beginning. The character development is long and since the film takes place at Halloween, viewers are forced to watch a montage of five minutes (but felt like an eternity) of two girls trying on costumes. Unless they are drag queens (and they aren't) there is no realistic way for two average white girls to have that many current Halloween costumes. It that sort of unbelievability that kills a B movie since they have so much less to work with. I relied on fast forward to take me through and I wasn't totally disappointed that I did continue on.

"Abandoned Mine" is sort of a scary movie for children. Or at least I hope so, because if this was seriously meant as a horror movie, then it just failed utterly and completely. There was absolutely nothing scary about the movie, aside from the fact it was lacking scared and the level of boredom it managed to invoke.

The story in "Abandoned Mine" is about a group of young friends who go out to an allegedly haunted mine together to celebrate Halloween. They have a good time and goof around, until one of them starts telling the tale that took place one hundred years earlier. And as a storm starts to roll in, the youngsters seek shelter within the mine shaft, and as curiosity gets the better of them, they decide to venture deeper into the mine to have a look around and see if they can scare up some spirits and ghosts for Halloween.

For a family movie, then "Abandoned Mine" would be adequate, as there is no gore, no mutilation, no scary parts, no nothing, in it to upset the viewers. But if you sit here and watch it, hoping it to be a proper horror movie, like I did, you will be sorely disappointed.

As a movie taking place in a haunted mine, there never was any sense of dread, claustrophobia or panic to be felt throughout the movie. Whether it was because of a fairly weak storyline or because the actors failed to portray such emotions, well I am most likely to say because of the lack of a proper storyline.

The people hired for the roles in "Abandoned Mine" were doing good enough jobs with their given characters, although they just didn't have much to work with.

If you want to be properly entertained by one of the spelunking horror movies, your money would be better spent on either of the "The Descent" movies. "Abandoned Mine" failed on many levels.