By Amy Balagna Posted April 2, 2009
This movie is everything a slasher movie should not be, or rather, it’s everything most slasher movies are. Fake blood, shaky computer-generated graphics, graphic scenes, gore, shallow love, and murder. I was rolling on the floor laughing, not literally, it was sticky.
The movie begins with a mine cave-in, and in turn a horrific murder by one of the trapped miners, the murderer merely turned to logic and made a decision to conserve his air by killing everyone else. The movie then shifts years in the future where said miner has recently woken up from a coma and killed everyone in the hospital.
It was totally believable.
The movie then shifts to a group of young adults parting in a mine shaft. Little did they know that Harry Warden, the murdering miner, was hiding inside… Most are killed with his pickaxe before the local sheriff saves the day. Among the survivors are Axel, played by Kerr Smith, his girlfriend Irene, played by Betsy Rue, Sarah, played by Jamie King, and Tom Hanniger, played by Jensen Ackles, the son of the man who owns the mine. I didn’t recognize these horrible actors from any other movies…
Tom flees the town, only to return ten years later to sell the mine that he has inherited. Is it a coincidence that murders start occurring the day he comes back at the very motel he is staying at?
Probably…
Axle’s now ex-girlfriend from the mine is the first to be killed, after she runs around in the buff for fifteen minutes. Don’t worry, this was no “Hostel”, it was better!
Sarah and Tom, no longer an item due to his ten-year absence, are reunited at the grocery store. Sarah is either still deeply in love or on the verge of a stroke during this conversation that reveals Sarah and Axle are married.
Oh, I forgot that Axle is cheating on Sarah with a bag girl from the grocery store his wife owns. I’m still not sure if that was relevant to the plot, but then again, I’m not sure what the plot was.
People are murdered and theories of who the culprit is range from the sheriff to the black man to Harry Warden miraculously pulling a Jesus and raising from the grave. Who for some reason was excavated from the mine and buried in the woods…
What about the good guy, clean-shaven, Tom Hanniger, who always happens to be chillin’ in his beat-up late 80s Ford Bronco? That would be my primo, numero uno, suspect, but I have faith that the two-person sheriff department can handle this mass murder case.
The movie was meant to be in 3-D, and it would have stepped it up substantially. In one particular scene, a man’s jaw is ripped off using a pickaxe and it was supposed to be flung at the audience. NEATO!
The movie concludes with most of the characters dead, some for no apparent purpose, but room is left for a sequel when the murderer peers into the camera with a creepy “I’m going to kill you look” after having walked away from a horrific explosion/mine cave-in.
Can’t wait.
Maybe in the next movie, we’ll get more in-depth into the complex politics this tiny town contains, they all seem to hate each other for a reason that is never revealed.
This movie blew my mind. Even with the horrible acting and lack of plot. Awards should be all over this movie…
