Something Beneath

An Episcopalian priest (Kevin Sorbo) leads an ecological conference at a new mountain resort, but some kind of mysterious black oil infects the people, causing hallucinations and death. What's the source of this substance and will any of them survive? Natalie Brown plays the event coordinator, Brendan Beiser a nutty scientist and Peter MacNeill the head of security.

"Something Beneath" (2007) is a creature feature that combines elements of Star Trek's "The Naked Time" (1966), "Phantoms" (1998) and the black oil episodes of The X-Files that started with "Piper Maru" (1996), which played a pivotal role in the series, including the first X-Files movie "Fight the Future" (1998).

Although this had a direct-to-video budget, and it's obvious, it has defined characters, an inventive plot and a relatively entertaining story. Sorbo has his usual charisma as the amiable minister and the subplot of his relationship with Khali (Brown) is well done. Brittany Scobie is on hand as an amusingly haughty "celebrity" while Paige Bannister plays Khali's cute assistant.

The film runs 1 hour, 30 minutes, and was filmed in Winnipeg with the mountain exterior shots obviously done in the Canadian Rockies.

GRADE: B-/C+

Just under your feet lurks an evil so deadly, so intelligent, it is scary. The attendees of an ecological summit are about to discover a bigger problem than global warming.

The plot reminds me of "Phantoms", but that may just be me. The film itself clearly has no relation to the Affleck masterpiece. This one is clearly more ecologically-based (and they never stop mentioning tree huggers, global warming and more -- they tried too hard).

What does it say when Kevin Sorbo is the only "name" actor? Maybe nothing, as lots of great films have unknown actors. But when you are seeking a mild celebrity and the only guy you can get to sign on for the project is Sorbo, that may not be a good sign for your movie. (I should stress this was not meant to knock Sorbo, who is quite good in this film. He is just not a name that generally draws in crowds.)

This was definitely intended to be humorous -- right off the bat, there are jokes about a dead guy and the line, "Days without a workplace injury -- zero." I appreciate that, because if you cannot make a scary horror film, you may as well make it funny.

I saw Something Beneath because while dubious(for obvious reasons) the concept was interesting, far-fetched perhaps but actually seemed as though SyFy were trying to do something different. The movie itself conversely doesn't live up to this concept. The film is not badly edited and Natalie Brown is quite good considering her clichéd character. However, while the concept promised much the delivery didn't live up to it, not much is done with the whole monster/hallucinations angle and these scenes come off as silly instead. The story sadly comes across as dull and unimaginative too, the overall tone feels no more different from the other SyFy creature movies. The script is often too talky and is so cheesy even the most hungry mouse wouldn't be able to finish it. The monster looks ridiculous and is not very imposing at all, while Something Beneath has annoying stereotypes for characters and bad acting even from Kevin Sorbo who always tries to save bad movies but not this time. The ending also falls flat, with no sense of tension and even worse the monster is defeated all too easily. Overall, pretty poor, but I have seen far worse. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Right, well given the fact that I hadn't even heard about this movie prior to stumbling upon it by random luck should serve as some kind of indicator of what I would be in for. But I still decided to give the movie a chance. It did have Kevin Sorbo in it after all, and he does manage to put out an adequate movie every now and again.

"Something Beneath" wasn't one of those times.

This movie was quite far from being scary. It wasn't even mildly thrilling, so don't get your hopes up in terms of getting to watch something grand and spectacular in the horror genre.

The special effects in the movie were adequate. They were not million-dollar-budget-blow-you-out-of-your-seat special effects, mind you. But they still served their purposes fairly well.

As for the acting in the movie, well let's just say that people acted well enough, taking into consideration the type of movie that it is and the budget.

"Something Beneath" is hardly the type of movie that you will return to watch a second time, provided you manage to sit through it the first time at all.

The acting isn't great, the dialogue is completely CHEESY. In a large number of action sequences there are fire balls that the characters don't seem to be aware of? Possibly a computer generated afterthought? I don't know. Silly monsters, I could see this being an episode of a TV series, but as a stand alone movie is poorly made. I feel ashamed for Winnipeg and disappointed in Sorbo.

The characters were annoying, and the jokes and assumptions about priests were repetitive and predictable. Ha ha, its so charming that he's a priest and good looking, WOW. I do not recommend you view this slice of garbage.