User reviews

Plot

Disguised as extreme adventurers, a group of high profile thieves unknowingly lead a group of wealthy tourists on an expedition through an abandoned salt mine that is guarded by ancient creatures.

Cast

Christopher Atkins stinks up every scene he's in, which is sadly most of them. Veteran Colm Meaney looks very out of place and Angela Featherstone and Chelan Simmons both deserve better.

Verdict

When you go in to a Scyfy Original you need to know something, you're likely in for a 90 minute migraine caused by bad writing, awful cgi and more goofs and inconsistencies than you could possibly imagine. Why do we put ourselves through them? I'll let you know when I've figured it out myself!

Caved In is one of the worst I believe I've seen, it doesn't even have the novelty factor of those of the past decade or so and their insistence on combining things to make a premise such as Piranhaconda, Arachnoquake, Ghost Shark, Dragon Wasps etc. A group of people go into a long since boarded up mine which is mysteriously illuminated and face off with giant awfully animated bugs, throw in a sideplot about criminal element and the obligatory goofy kids and you have Caved In.

Awful head scratching stupidity.

Rants

I must applaud user cbrow on his review and list of goofs, there's stuff in there I hadn't even picked up on and demonstrates further that Scyfy can't think much of their audience, either that or they are just dumber than a pierced bag of farts.

The Good

Meaney and Featherstone are always appreciated

The Bad

Goof after goof Dreadful cgi Lead has no place in the industry, he's that bad.

Watched this tonight...it was a forced endeavor after the first few minutes. The Sci Fi Network has some real need of new creative staff, writers and directors. This was a poorly done venture of a pitiful film. While I enjoyed seeing Colm Meaney (Vincent) and Christopher Atkins (John Palmer) again, even their acting was rather bleak. The plot was interesting, but overdone - huge mutant beetles living underground for who knows how long. While the bugs themselves looked 'real', the editing was painful! There were really bad clips during the entire movie. Pay attention to a scene early in the movie when the group is going down the mine shaft – one guy nearly falls out – watch the 'skillful' editing when they get him back on the lift! Amateur film makers with Hi-8 Video Cameras could have probably done a better job. What was up with the actors who played the kids? Chelan Simmons (Emily Palmer) and Stevie Mitchell (Miles Palmer) were real screamers! I had to check the cast list to make sure that the actress who played Emily wasn't the daughter of Kate Capshaw! (Remember all the shrill, needless screaming she did in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). All Chelan/Emily did was scream nearly the entire movie. If the writers were more realistic, the character of Emily would have been more of a fighter and helped her mother, Samantha (played by Angela Featherstone). At one point, I hoped Samantha would just shoot Emily to shut her up. I love the Sci Fi Channel because I really love Science Fiction and Adventure films, but the bigwigs in that network need a reality check and clean house of those who are producing their network movies. Most Sci Fi Channel/Network 'Original' movies have been absolutely horrible. Why do I even try to watch their 'Original' movies? Because I do live this type of movie and want to give them a chance and...I must also be a glutton for punishment...I keep expecting that they will finally get with the right picture.

Sci Fi DOES have some great and very creative commercials - maybe they need to have the people making those promotional spots produce their network movies.

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!

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.

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.

"Caved In" features several 'name' actors who are unfortunately reduced to acting in such a by-the-books film. Christopher Atkins and Angela Featherstone play husband and wife John and Samantha Palmer who, along with their 2 children work as guides of some sort (I don't recall is being specifically stated what they do other than take people around strange places).

Instead of going on a family vacation, John Palmer accepts on offer of a lot of money to take some less-than-respectable people into some ancient caverns to hunt for a tomb full of emeralds. So he does, while his family are left to explore above-ground. Naturally, things get out of hand in the old tunnels when giant (CGI) beetles begin attacking, and one-by-one the bad guys all begin to get killed off, or double crossed. The bugs begin making their way to the surface, putting Palmer's family in even more danger.

The acting is not too bad, well, it shouldn't be considering who some of the cast are. Christopher Atkins and Angela Featherstone both give decent performances, but poor Colm Meany, formerly of "Star Trek" fame is reduced to little in his role here. Monica Dean and David Palffy are fairly good in their roles as criminals, though one of them has a heart. Chelan Simmons spends the entire movie being unlivable annoying and / or running around screaming. It's a good thing her acting ability also improves for her next film "Final Destination 3".

Sci-Fi and Horror are combined often for films ("Event Horizon", "Alien") but do not always work well together. This is one of those cases where it's really personal preference, as the film lacks a lot of things, but it is not without trying.

This movie is so awful people should watch it to see how awful one can get. If you put aside the terrible acting, stupid dialog, really really bad effects, if you put aside that people who wrote the story didn't give any thought about how mines look, how caving is done, what bugs look like and how they act, if you put aside that characters in the movie always do the opposite what you would do you are left with a story that has more holes then all the swiss cheese in this universe. The outline of the story is not that terrible really, but what they have done with it is something completely else. In the beginning I said people should watch it to see how awful a sci-fi movie could get. But keep in mind this is more like a parody than a real sci-fi.

In 1948, a group of miners finds a gallery full of emeralds in a salt mine in Switzerland, but they are attacked by giant black beetles and only one of them survives. In the present days, the explorer John Palmer (Christopher Atkins) is ready to take vacations in Greece with his family when he is contacted and invited by a stranger called Vincent (Colm Meaney) to lead his team in an expedition into a mine in Switzerland. In return, Vincent offers a large amount to John and the cottage nearby a lake and the entrance of the mine for his family spends the vacation. John accepts the offer, and while leading the group underground in the tunnels, he finds that their ambitious leader Marcel (David Palffy) is a very dangerous man. When John meets giant black beetles in the cave, he orders the group to return but Marcel threatens the safety of his family, forcing John to lead the team to the deep location of the emerald mine.

"Caved In" is a B-movie with the usual flaws of this type of film, such as bad acting, silly lines, poor effects and a flawed and in this case corny screenplay. However, it is funny and entertains if the viewer likes those low-budget horror / sci-fi from the 50's and 60's. The blonde Chelan Simmons spends her time screaming and saying the most stupid lines of the story. The teenager Stevie Mitchell is young and has time to dedicate to another profession, or at least try to study how to act, how terrible his acting is in this film. Colm Meaney, Angela Featherstone, David Palffy and Christopher Atkins have good performances and Monica Birladeanu is extremely gorgeous. In the end, I did not totally dislike this forgettable film. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "A Caverna Maldita" ("The Damned Cave")

For some reason Redbox started renting this "B" rated movie. Well they got my dollar and that's 1 hour and 30 minutes, I'll never get back. Very Hard to understand why anyone would pay to have a movie like this put out. Really hard to believe this film had a budget. The acting was just plain awful, I was expecting the boom chichka boom boom music to come on at any time. The two female leads we semi hot but their acting made it even hard to look at. I've seen better Godzilla movies, so please if you read this do not waste your time on this horrible excuse for a film. I guess you have to have at least ten lines to qualify for a review so I need to ramble on a little longer. I wouldn't even waste my time writing on this but I feel it is my civic duty to save others from the pain I experienced watching this.

This has got to be one of the worst movies I have seen in a while. I was severely disappointed with this movie as I'm all for watching the DVD's that only have a couple of copies on the shelf at the DVD store as they're quite often rare gems, but this was one of the exceptions.

This is a classic, badly made B grade movie: Dodgy no-name, b-grade actors with terrible clichéd lines that can't act, amateur designed CG beetles that move jerkily and don't seam in with the movie at all, ghastly and unrealistic lighting (is meant to be 2000ft below ground but you can see everything like they're out in the middle of a summers day), crappy fake/unrealistic set design (I've seen better at a theatre production!), terrible fake, stupid gore shots put in only for shock value to cover the gaping fact that the plot is shockingly badly written and there is no substance to it & shocking cinematography. The director wants his face slapped! My final comment would be: if you want a good laugh at a terrible movie, get this out, otherwise, leave well alone!

Other reviewers re-tell the plot here but I won't because I consider that a spoiler. This is a pretty good science-fiction/horror movie with likable actors portraying a family and some really nasty bad guys. I couldn't help but think the lead actor looks a lot like actor Mark Hamill.

The sets are great and the dangers lurking will give you the creeps. The music score is appropriate for the film, with tonalities equal to the menace affecting the characters.

Seven out of ten stars for being well-made, including the special effects, which are quite realistic and detailed.

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.

This movie by far was the worst movie i saw. The graphics are very awful and are 1995 graphics (exaggerating). The movie is an obvious script, meaning that it's kinda obvious that its about being in a cave. The whole movie was a complete copy of The Cave. The Cave was good this one struck beans. The actors are not familiar and they did not do very well in makeup, the actors did not act very well to be honest. About two characters actually knew how to act. And the rest did not. I would not recommend this movie. I wanted to stop watching it right at the beginning, but i thought it would get better. I was wrong, it was very dumb. the sets were used a lot over and over making it look dumb. It was definitely not realistic. They did have correct facts but not computer animations. It looks like a computer game. See at your own risk, this was my opinion. Go with whatever you want to do. See ya!

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

What's a good B movie without giant creatures? Giant ants, giant worms, prehistoric beasts, and giant beetles. Yech. Yech. yech.

If you are a B movie fan, then this one follows the formula to the letter. Family is going on vacation to shut up that whiny teenager, Chelan Simmons (Final Destination 3, Good Luck Chuck). They get an offer they can't refuse (gotta pay that brat's tuition) and head to Switzerland to help some people explore an old mine.

What they do not know can kill them. These are not good people. They are after emeralds. There is something guarding those emeralds.

So while mom (Angela Featherstone - Army of darkness, Con Air) watches the kids, dad (Christopher Atkins - The Blue Lagoon) takes Colm Meaney and his bunch down into the mines. Chow time for the beetles! I spent a lot of time wondering if Monica Dean (Incubus) would survive, but it was a fun and exciting adventure, especially when Simmons get creamed with beetle juice. (insert nasty comment here).

Not a complete waste of time.

I see the beginning of a beautiful friendship: sci-fi recipe films and cheap Romanian actors and studios. I actually watched this to see what Romanian actors would do and, unfortunately, they all did horribly. I can't really say that Monica Barladeanu played badly, given that the scenes with her were either she looking beautiful, looking interested and nodding to what a guy is saying, either screaming. Marius Chivu wasn't completely awful either. Colm Meaney was his usual self, demoted from starship engineer to silly bad guy, while everybody else just played stupid, unrealistic roles and stinking at it.

OK, the plot: giant bugs live underground, but they only get out when Americans come near the cave. It's a natural mutation that occurred somewhere in ancient Egypt, so maybe they are attracted to Jews, not Americans. Anyway, these smart bugs realized that living individually, having a normal size and eating dung is not a good way of life, therefore they elected a queen, covered her in expensive jewelry and proceeded on obeying her every command. Come on! There is no plot! Giant bugs, stupid weapons, women screaming, some entrails and blood, bugs stick together for the explosive finale, the end.

Conclusion: not even cult status bad. It's a mediocre type of film, the kind of movie where all extras are Romanian, but have German or French names for whatever reason. Stay away from it.

If you like bad movies for the camp value, you might enjoy this steaming pile, otherwise step carefully around it and keep moving.

I laughed my butt off.

So many glaring errors and "it doesn't work that way"s, I can't imagine the writers did much other than drink and scribble on cocktail napkins.

A favorite was the endless pump action shotgun that never ran out of ammo. A "queen" beetle has to rank up there, too. And the 1980's had better CGI.

This movie could be re-made entirely from clips of other underground/giant insect movies, from the rickety swinging rope bridge to the hang from ledge edge and have your hands stepped on by the bad guy. They really covered every cliché possible from the genre, more to fill time than as any sort of "homage".

I couldn't spoil the ending if I wanted to. You already know it. You'll know every move the movie makes on the way there, too, including all the terrible telegraphed one liners, and the attempt to distract the audience from that knowing - with odd blaster guns and graphic violence - only highlights the fact that there isn't an original moment of the 90 minutes you'll regret having spent watching this.

Stay away, unless you like to laugh at the absurd.

It is definitely one of the worst TV movies I've seen on sci-fi ever i wish i wouldn't have sat though it but ever time i got ready to walk away something interesting would happen so u could say its a good movie to watch once but thats about it I also didn't really like the idea of only the family and the one girl surviving or the fact of the gun being a Lazar. i mean come on could have made it a little more realistic but its a movie and the thought of huge bugs being around all them years and never coming up to the surface is really a stupid idea bugs dig the had all them tunnels but never been to the surface thats stupid the needed to make it seem like that could live on the surface for some reason i don't know watch it if u dare

In all honesty, I was not expecting much from this movie, seeing as it was SyFy, but there are some decent actors here so I went ahead. I found Caved In to be a lame movie in most respects, but nowhere near the worst SyFy's done. The only reasons why I didn't rate it any lower are three quite good performances from Angela Featherstone(the best of the cast in my opinion), Christopher Atkins and Marius Chivros. The rest of the cast are bad, Colm Meaney doesn't have much to do and spends the whole movie looking lost or bored and Chelan Simmons is incredibly annoying, doing little more than screaming and other shrill antics. The actors aren't helped by the underdeveloped and stereotypical way their characters are written, or by the clichéd script and the formulaic story that further suffers from lack of tension and suspense and too many scenes to list that were unbelievable. Add to that lighting that distracted from the atmosphere and the setting's authenticity, with scenes being lit too brightly where it should have a dark, claustrophobic feel, and (even for SyFy) terrible artificial-looking effects, and you have a pretty poor movie. Overall, other than three performances, Caved In is not worth bothering with. 3/10 Bethany Cox

I am getting really sick of Sci-Fi's endless parade of beyond crappy movies. I feel quite insulted by this channel's wasted resources and it makes me want to stop watching everything on it in protest. The development department must think that Sci-Fi fans will watch anything with a bug or monster in it. While Caved In is not nearly as bad as some of the Sci-Fi movies I've seen, I am utterly astounded that movies like this continue to get made. Maybe I should take 15 minutes and write a script for their next movie. If I could give this movie a negative rating I would but I suppose it's worth a 1 for having Christopher Atkins is in it. I actually thought he did a decent job with what he was given and I watched it because he was in it. He looks great, by the way. Monica Dean was pretty good too but the rest of the actors were horrid. With the exception of those two, the overacting that plagues every Sci-Fi movie didn't fail to grace this one. I have not bothered with a Sci-Fi movie in a long a time and was once again reminded why I decided to avoid them in the first place. Stupid Sci-Fi Channel....

Wow. I agree with the above review 100%. Sci-Fi needs to try and hire some decent directors. Think about it, even with the small budget these films probably have, a good director could make all the difference. I would watch a well directed movie even if the special effects were done on someone's home computer! And although I'm no film student or movie maker, I do notice things in movies that are cheaply made in contrast to those which are made with a large budget. Lighting: In a cheap movie, the lighting is uniform in every single scene! In this movie, they were in a cave for a long time, but with the lighting, it was too obvious it was a set. If they'd just made it darker, we could have suspended our disbelief a little bit. Sound: Most major motion pictures use some stereo to mix it up a bit. However, all these cheap movies appear to have everything in mono, so it's hard to hear actors vs. sound effects. Acting: I know it's damn hard to find actors who can do a good job, but give me a break. It seems that Sci-fi always goes to find the old has- been actors to do these movies. Guess what? These people are has-beens because they weren't any good to start with!!!! Here's a tip: go find some fresh-out-of-acting school actors, and give them a shot. It has GOT to be better than what we see in these movies! Fuce! I could out act the fools in those movies!

This movie is pretty formulaic. In fact, you can probably tell what's going to happen and who's going to live and die as soon as you figure out who the main characters are. Nothing else really happens. I rate it average because it wasn't reprehensibly bad (makes you cringe with dislike), like some bad movies are.

The story involves the search for emeralds located in an old, abandoned mine. There is a map and a warning of bad creatures that are also located where the emeralds are. The bad guys have the map and hire an unsuspecting American guide (Atkins) to help them get it - and the story progresses from there.

If you can figure out what's going to happen according to standard formulaic sci-fi/horror plots, you need not see this movie.