Susan Granger’s review of “The Cave” (Screen Gems)
Even for a weird creature-feature, this run-of-the-mill scare story is decidedly mundane.
A prologue set during the Cold War shows a group of adventurers descending into a cave that’s hidden beneath a long-abandoned 13th century abbey in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains.
Skip ahead to the present and a team of renown divers and cave explorers arrive at the same site. There’s Jack (Cole Hauser), the expedition leader, and his reckless brother Tyler (Eddie Cibrian), along with spelunker Top Buchanan (Morris Chestnut) and Charlie (Piper Perabo), an expert climber (Piper Perabo) who darts around in a bikini. Add brainy biologists (Lena Headley and Marcel Iures), plus a photographer (Daniel Dae Kim) and technician (Kieran Darcy-Smith). Without any discernible goal except discovering the local eco-system, they descend into the dark depths of the cavern, where they encounter human remains, along with underground lakes, thermal spouts, treacherous rapids, an unexpected waterfall and flesh-eating predators.
Screenwriters Michael Steinberg & Tegan West’s formulaic, derivative script features hackneyed lines like, “Something is in the water!” and “As long as we stay together, we can survive!” Ha! Under Bruce Hunt’s novice direction, there’s little suspense because the characters are never clearly delineated before they’re devoured, one-by-one, by winged underground creatures that can swim, fly and – worse of all – mutate via parasites. Scary? Not really, since they resemble B-picture “Alien” cousins – and we’ve seen that too often before.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Cave” is a lame, murky 3, deserving a direct route to the video shelf despite the groundwork that’s laid for a sequel.
