Urban Explorer - Le sous-sol de l'horreur

The premise of this movie looked interesting. I never heard of "Urban Exploring" before. I am a small town guy. But in a country like Germany with its past, it make a lot of sense. Sadly this movie altough good in some aspect, didn't manage to be nearly as good as "As Above So Below" wich is set in Paris Catacombs and that i watched early this spooky season.

So first of all the movie takes so much time to start off. Yes suspense and story building is important, but i never felt it achieved either. The movie is well directed and the camera angles, lights etc are on point, and the acting felt very decent too, but i was just hoping that it would eventually start to be an horror movie.

It eventually does, but you understand quite fast what is going to happen and i felt its where it dropped the ball.

The main issue is how STUPID the characters are. Yes horror movies characters are often cliché and for a movie to work, you got to have these characters make a few "dumb decisions". But in this case its again and again and as many other reviewers said, i wanted to yell at my screen because of how dumb they were and i knew exactly what they should had done to avoid what happened.

Is the "torture porn" at least worth it? Not really. You got one solid scene for sure but thats it. The movie is mostly a thriller and a "cat and mouse" type of movie but again leading to the aspect that these characters were so insufferably dumb to me, that i couldn't care ultimately if they died or not.

In the end the movie bored me at times. Despite the short runtime i looked at the time remaining multiple times. That said i do feel a lot was very well done on a technical side of things so i am gonna bump it from a 4 to a 5 out of 10. It is also a German "indy movie" from my understanding, not an Hollywood production.

My version was dubbed in French and there was 0 German or other foreign languages. They all spoke in french so i had no need for subtitles or anything. French is my native language. The dubbing was surprisingly fine for a low budget horror movie.

I had the chance to watch this movie at the Fantasia festival in Montreal and it blew me away. Urban Explorers biggest let down came in the introduction and story telling that up to a certain point it followed a bit too closely the usual scary movie blueprint down to the usual characters archetype (the cool guy, the wannabe hero, the scared girl, etc.).

I said up to a certain point because the movie really start to shine once the exploration truly begins. I was sucked in the gritty atmosphere created by the amazing locations Urban Explorer was filmed in enhance by the actors who manage to really make you feel uncomfortable.

All in all this movie is going into my library once released as a must see for fan of the genre.

This movie deserves much more then a 5.2 rating on IMDb. I'm not saying that you will get great dialogs or deep conversations and that's not the point. This is a horror/thriller and so you don't need that. The only thing you need with a horror/thriller is suspense, creepy background sounds, a nasty villain, a lot of screaming and blood. And all that you will get with this movie. The actors were not bad at all, especially the German subterranean psycho played by Klaus Stiglmeier. You will need subtitles for this movie because at the end there is quite a lot of German language. I thought the underground sceneries were perfect for this movie so that you would get the feeling that there is no escape from that weirdo. Great entertainment if you like that kind of movies. Certainly much better then the usual stuff we get in that genre.

I think this could have been an engaging flick. It has some good character development and an interesting premise. The acting is acceptable, and the filming/directing is solid. With that said, this movie does suffer an identity crisis – even the title shows the problems in the movie. The Depraved – Urban Explorer says it all. The movie is not really either, but a poor cross of both. This is not the traditional slasher, gore fest circa Hostel or Turistas. Nor is it an adventure film with Nazis and underworld crime, rather it is a blend that does not succeed in either genre.

The movie starts as a group of tourists is lead into an underground tunnel system under Berlin. There are plenty of interesting red herrings, and exciting action as they descend deeper and deeper under the city. This goes on successfully for nearly 2/3s of the movie, and I was engaged enough that I forgot that something 'depraved' was going to happen. It does, and when it does it is pretty lame.

The movie then turns into a cliché horror with all the classic conventions – girl getting tortured, cell phones dying at the right (wrong) time, the 'is he dead?' bad guy. However, there is nothing overly interesting or unique about the depraved or the situation. I kept wishing they would get back to the interesting tunnel system to explore.

As in all slasher movies, the ending is underwhelming, but by then I had pretty much tuned out. This movie could have been pretty entertaining, and starts off enjoyable, but can't decide what it wants to be. I would have been happy with just the Urban, keep the Depraved to yourself.

This movie isn't really that much different from some other "pycho" on the loose movies. Even if some try to tell you different. Though I am excited for you, if you really liked this movie, giving this the approval of "masterpiece" is more than a far stretch. You might think it's really good, but don't go around throwing big words like that, they never tend to stick and do more harm than good.

Having said that, the movie isn't half bad (if you can overlook some bad OTT acting and some flaws in the screenplay). Also there are strands left in the dark (no pun intended), which shows that some scenes only made it into the movie for superficial reasons. The good thing though is that you have a really bad guy as "baddie" and this guy is good at what he does best! Some good effects round everything up. A nice little horror movie with a psycho touch.