Mina Abandonada

With so many horror B-movies with the word 'dead' in the title, you could be forgiven for thinking that 'Dead Mine' would contain hordes of cheaply-made up flesh-eating ghouls hunting down a cast list of annoyingly-attractive drama students. It doesn't though. Instead it's more one of those films where a group of surprisingly unattractive platoon of soldiers encounter a bunker of undead Nazis (with disastrous consequences).

And it's always Nazis. It seems you can't tunnel more than two feet below Europe without unearthing a secret World War II experiment of some kind or another. But not here. Dead Mine is completely different. Here we're in an island off the coast of Japan and there isn't a single psychotic World War II scientist to be found. They're Japanese instead. Here, our hapless treasure hunters get trapped in (guess what?) a mine, only to be stalked by what can best be described as Samauri Golum gimps.

It's like if 'Decent' and 'Outpost' had a child, then 'Dead Mine' would be their offspring. Only it's not really as good as either. That's not to say that it's (that) bad. It's no classic (not even a cult classic), but, if you're in the mood, it's watchable enough.

Performances aren't anything special. You'll pretty much guess who's going to die and in which order from the beginning, as most people's motives are pretty self explanatory.

There's not as much gore as you might think, which will annoy some people. The budget obviously didn't allow for that much in the way of special effects.

The story is as you'd expect and starts off pretty well, however the final act gets a little weird and may leave you wondering what happened.

All in all, if you haven't seen Outpost or Decent and you find this film on some movie streaming website and you don't have to pay for it, then it might fill an hour and a half. As I didn't have to pay to watch it I'm being more lenient on it. I wouldn't say it was worth the price of a cinema admission though!

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By now we are used to seeing all sorts of horrors coming to us from Asia, but they all had one thing in common, they were seriously messed up, with rare exceptions. Dead Mine, an Indonesian medium budget movie takes an almost textbook approach to storytelling, and while graphic violence is present, it isn't sick or anything, but just as I said more classically bloody that we are used to seeing in American horrors. The movie itself is nothing special, but the exotic locations,cast and story make up for that. The director Steven Sheil managed to make the movie look really good, with some innovative camera angles and relatively suspenseful scenes, sacrificing reality for looks. Although when the movie's about zombies, Second World War and strange things lurking in the depths of the mine, reality discussion is really not a valid one.

An expedition led by a very wealthy, I guess scientist, called Price has finally found the thing they were looking for in Indonesia, an old abandoned bunker from WW 2. Price, accompanied by his girlfriend, a Japanese journalist on a quest to find out more about the war and a bunch of mercenaries in charge of their safety, decides to take a closer look. As soon as he said it, they were attacked by a local gang and forced to find shelter in the mine that has been converted into a bunker. After the cave in, they find themselves trapped in the mine with only one option, to push forward, into the darkness. What they don't know is that the mine is not abandoned, but far from it...

Fascination by Nazi zombies is something that has kept filmmakers in Europe occupied for quite some time, but now we are seeing this trend in Asia with Japans soldiers. While the directing was good and they managed to make Dead Mine look visually great, the story and the dialogue needs to be better. The thing that I missed the most is the suspense building up as they go deeper and deeper into the mine... Check out Dead Snow, a movie with a similar subject if you liked Dead Mine. It's not the best movie out there, but it's worth a watch...

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In an isolated island in Indonesia, an expedition is apparently seeking the legendary Yamashita's Gold. Out of the blue, they are attacked and seek refugee in an abandoned Japanese bunker. Soon they discover that the place was a secret laboratory in the World War II where the prisoners were guinea pig in weird experiments. Further, they are trapped inside with strong and resistant creatures created by these experiments. Will they succeed to escape from the dead mine?

I really do not understand how producers (HBO, not Sci-Fi) can spend their money in garbage like that. The story is a terrible rip-off of "The Descent" and I believe anyone who read it would have at least some doubts to make a movie. The dialogs are extremely poor and the motive of the expedition is a mess. Who are the guys that shoot the expedition? How the Japanese survivor had eaten and drunken along all those years trapped in the bunker with the creatures? How someone could inject a rusted syringe with a sixty and something year-old substance in another person with the intention of healing him? The group splitting to be more easily killed is one annoying clichés. The awful lack of conclusion seems to show the intention of a sequel, meaning more wasted money. Last but not the least; the acting is more dreadful than the creatures. My vole is two.

Title (Brazil): "Mina Abandonada" ("Abandoned Mine")

I remember the first time I saw the poster for this movie, and I decided to stay clear of the movie, believing it to be something in the likes of the "Chernobyl Diaries" movie also from 2012, as the poster is much alike, and that "Chernobyl Diaries" movie was just abysmal.

Then come 2013 and I found out that Joe Taslim is in this movie, so my interest was instantly caught, and I decided to give the movie a go regardless of prior assumptions.

And now having seen it, I sit here with a really bad taste in my mouth. The movie starts out well enough, but then it just peaks and becomes too much, and the movie just spiraled out of control and everything just fell to the floor.

The story is about a group of hired soldiers led by a treasure hunter to seek out the fabled Yamashita's Gold treasure. As the group becomes trapped inside an old mine dating back to World War II, they quickly figure out that they are not alone in the dark mine.

Right, well the story did have potential to be interesting and it did start out well enough and promising enough. But then suddenly after the first revealings of what has been lurking around in the long-abandoned mine, then suddenly director Steven Sheil decided to throw in three squads of what I assume to be reanimated dead Japanese Bushido samurai warriors. And that is when the line snapped for the movie. Once these were introduced, the movie just went from an adequate action horror movie to a laughable attempt at an action horror movie. It was just awful and abysmal to witness. These animated samurai warriors totally killed any shred of enjoyment and entertainment that the movie had.

As for the acting, then people were doing good enough jobs with their given roles. And as I mentioned earlier, then it was because of Joe Taslim that I decided to give this movie a chance. Unfortunately his role wasn't all that big, much to my disappointment.

It should be said that the movie actually does fare well on the effects and creature make-up department. Thumbs up for that, at least.

I supposed this abandoned mine should never have been opened, and then at least I wouldn't have wasted 87 minutes watching it.

Here we go again, different location, different nation, but the same WWII bunker story. Instead of the German's and the Nazi's we have the Japanese and the undead Samurai. This in itself should have made for some great and spectacularly gory fighting scenes... but it doesn't.

This isn't just down to the direction and special effects though; the story plays a major part in this disappointment. The writers, Ziad Semaan and Steven Sheil, meanders through the telling. It starts well and then gradually slows and slows. There are a lot of pregnant pauses and translating. All of which isn't necessarily needed. Then by the time, the crap hits the fan and the undead Samurai super-soldiers appear (which is way too late in the film) the director cannot increase the pace enough to re-envigorate the viewer.

The director, Steven Shiel, isn't too bad, though a bit more imagination wouldn't have gone amiss. Everything about the shoot is average. There's no play with light. Even though they're in an ancient bunker the lights work brilliantly - Great Japanese Electronics. Not once do the lights go out to create tension. Unfortunately, Sheil isn't able to create tension or suspense in the light. He could have tried different camera angles, blurred backgrounds with moving shapes-come-shadows. But, no. However, this doesn't damage the film too bad but it would have made it so much better.

The best thing about this film is the strength of the cast. Each of them gives a good performance of their character. Sam Hazeldine is particularly good as Stanley. He has screen presence. You know when he's on-screen and he delivers his lines superbly. He makes his character realistic and you can't help but believe in him. Two couples have some nice chemistry together. One is Warren Price (Les Loveday) and Rie (Miki Mizuno) who are lovers but just think about making the quick buck. The others are, Captain Tino Prawa (Ario Bayu) and his second in command - these two have a fine bromance going for them. The acting does lift the story and the film, but not enough. It's watchable, though, I don't think you'll be recommending it to anyone.

If you've not watched a WWII Bunker horror flick before... There are better than this around to cut your teeth on. Check out the Outpost series. However, if you're all watched up and there's nothing else on (which was my case) then this will pass an hour and a half. But the slowness and meandering story may bore you a little.

Feel free to check out my Absolute Horror list-come-chart to see this ranks or to find something to new to view.