Caved In

I saw this movie and while it wasn't really too bad for this genre, I had problems believing a few things:

1: The main character is a very good caving expert but they go into this very "perilous" caved in mine with out basic safety gear like helmets.

2: After 58 years, the power is still on in the mine and the lights still work. This was lucky because nobody seemed to be carrying any torches or lights.

3: After 58 years, this mine, beside a lake, has no water in it.

4: The second thing that they all do, after turning on the lights, is to jump on this rickety old wooden elevator to descend 2000 feet. This seems foolish to me especially for some caving "expert".

5: The two-way radios do not look like low frequency cave radios and their reception seems really really good after going through 2000 feet of rock?

6: Can you really get these rocket-propelled anchors that you can shoot into rock that will then hold firm enough to swing from? If so, shouldn't you test them before using them to swing across an abyss?

7: Why does a "caver" need a rocket-propelled emergency beacon?

8: The main character carried a very small back-pack. It seemed barely big enough for the rocket-propelled anchor with about 15 feet of rope, rocket-propelled emergency beacon and explosives that he took. I am not an expert but I would have taken more caving equipment like torches, ropes, helmets, slings, harness.

9: Why do the "laser rifles" need to be cocked (but not reloaded) every now and then? Where does the rock go when it is disintegrated?

10: I didn't know that emeralds actually generated their own light. But they looked pretty.

11: I saw baby monster beetles coming out of a dead mans mouth. If the young are only 2 inches long, then why are the eggs nearly a foot long?

12: Why kill the old man if that meant that they would only be able to make one trip down the mine to get emeralds? Why not leave him alive and sneak down as many times as they wanted and get as many emeralds as they wanted? Why are the bad guys so dumb?

13: Why kill Colm Meanie before he has helped carry emeralds to the surface?

14: Who keeps a loaded shotgun hanging on their living room wall?

In all sincerity, I really like finding a movie with this many gaffs.

Take the monsters out of the plot and you might have had a good adventure story, the sort of things we used to see on Saturday afternoons. Oh well, the monsters were a good addition to the plot anyway. Wait . . . did I just say "plot"? I did, didn't I? Oops, my mistake. This was yet another fill-in-the-blank story that managed to offer a few surprises but not many.

Our hero is taken hostage by some French terrorists (insert joke here) who hold his wife and children captive while he is forced to lead a group of them through an abandoned mine in search of a fortune in emeralds allegedly buried there. Now right away you know there are going to be problems and the problem in this movie is:

A. Personality clashes

B. Cave-ins

C. Giant prehistoric Rhinoceros Beetles

D. Bad special effects

E. Bad acting

Did you say "all of the above"? Good! You obviously know what to expect from movies like this. The leader of the terrorists is such an unlikable crumb you just know something really awful is going to happen to him and sure enough, it does! The gun toting psychopath named Marcel who is holding the hero's wife and daughter hostage is just as bad and meets an equally awful fate after he has been in the picture long enough for the audience to really get to hate him.

The giant beetles, and there are loads of them, are fairly well rendered but when they attack you get the feeling you are not watching a movie but a video game. Several of the monsters have a tendency to explode when hit by high velocity bullets and you could almost see a score getting progressively higher in the upper right hand corner of the screen if you use your imagination. CGI effects like these will never replace stop motion animation; at least not in my opinion.

So is this movie good? I've seen better, LOTS better!

Plenty of action for fans of these big mutated bug creature movies. Since the focus is just to showcase the inflated insects chasing and feeding on screaming extras, the feeble plot full of familiar devices really doesn't hurt. It's low budget stuff all the way, but fun.

Many Sci-Fi channel flicks like to mix some "bad victims who deserve to die in a poetic justice way and you can't wait until they get it" with some "good innocent victims in the wrong place at the wrong time who ought to live but some of them don't" types. This routine of course insures plenty of blood, and so it is this time: crooks want to get at some valuable jewels or something underground in a mine somewhere, and trick a guy into leading them to it. Said guy has teen daughters, etc. Guess what? You'll never guess! Giant bugs are there, too! The bugs are cheaply rendered, the CGI animation look like somebody glued a magazine photo of a bug on your TV screen, and slid it around with a pencil.

Familiar territory, and most of the actors failed Drama 1A. But it still can entertain if you take it for what it is, campy fast food b-budget sci-fi/horror.

I was at Hollywood video one day, and they had this big sale going on, so I bought quit a bit of movies. I was looking and I came across this. I looked at it and though, it looked "okay", not good, but okay. I also didn't know it was a TV movie (or sci-fi channel movie either). So, I bought the movies, came home, and I think I watched this one first. I could not believe what I was watching.. .utter crap. This movie was so bad it was funny (and, slightly fun, but not enough to like the movie). I couldn't believe the CGI effects, it was laughable to the extreme. And like most cheap horror films, the gore was over-the-top, and so was the acting (which also is really amateur). This was definitely without a doubt one of the worst movies ever made, not even sure how it got made to begin with. I rate it 3/10 (somewhat generous). Rated R for horror violence and gore

Reptilicus said just about everything. I would like to know 2 things however. First - why do all animate creatures in movies have to roar? I thought that the best beetles could do is click. Second - Where can I get one of those shotguns that never has to be re-loaded? This film could have been made in the 1950's.

The plot really was a fill in the blank effort. The big problem is that they only filled in 3 blanks - character names, location, and type of ridiculous "monster".

The least the Sci-Fi channel is do, is to hire Charles Band to produce and direct these movies. At least he knows how to do it properly.

Just another of the Sci-Fi channel's dismal and disappointing offerings.