Underground (I) (2011) User Reviews

Lots of screaming girls and tough guys

[spotlightne · 4/10 · 8 December 2011]

It's your usual 'young people get trapped (this time underground) and have to fight for their lives against mutants' movie.

It's all very much in the Wrong Turn vein. You know, the cast are good looking. There are lots of pretty, short-skirted females screaming the place down. The guys run around all tough and are, funnily enough, the easiest slain.

But underground it's dark, and thus we're often faced with a too dark picture. Half the time I couldn't see what was going on.

The ending couldn't have come quick enough as I was becoming increasingly bored with this movie. It's 'b' rated stuff, nothing special.

4/10.

Far from good!

[Patient444 · 3/10 · 1 April 2012]

Some of the comments here are just a tad bit too good for this movie, as it really does suck and will bore anyone out of their mind, if not get him quite mad because it lacks the basic logic also! You could say that indeed it is some sort of breed between The Descent and The Cave, probably & Creep also, but I think that Underground only got the bad parts from them.

Seriously, this is one of them very bad movies, even the camera work is terrible, as you will see it shaking from time to time, the characters are not so bad OK, but the plot, well we really have a problem here! Cheesy cheesy, cliché, cliché and you can always tell when someone else is going to die! As for the creatures, when you'll hear the explanation for them, you'll probably start laughing, only good part of the movie to be honest.

Bottom line, do try The Descent, The Cave, Creep even Stag Night, but stay awaaaaay from this one! I gave it a 3! Solid 3!

Rip-off of The Descent

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 10 December 2014]

Neil Marshall's THE DESCENT was a fine stab at a survival horror yarn, featuring some excellent locations (those dank and dismal caves were a perfect backdrop for the scares) and a race of nasty villains who seemed to be descended from Gollum. UNDERGROUND is a cheap and nasty American version of the above, with the setting swapped to an underground military bunker.

Unfortunately, UNDERGROUND has much in common with modern-day B-movies as it's the kind of film you watch and mildly enjoy in places, but soon forget about once the credits roll. The script and production values of this film are poor, with much of the running time consisting of too much repetitive wandering around in semi-darkness. Needless to say the characters are bland and undistinguished, with nobody to root for.

The monsters in the film are passable, and I enjoyed the couple of fight scenes that we get here and there (the choreography isn't too shabby). As with many B-movies, the gore content is ramped up to compensate for failings elsewhere, and there are a couple of great gags involving eyeball violence and a twist on the old "ripped in half" joke. Sadly, the film as a whole is just too dark and bland to be worth watching, though.

All copies of this movie should be buried underground

[Orpheus_Unlimited · 1/10 · 12 May 2018]

I'll make this very short & easy: don't waste your precious time watching this atrocity. It's a complete insult to the senses.

Photography in this film is horrible. Acting is laughable. Music is bad. FX are mostly C grade, especially makeup & CGI (practical ones are kinda OK though). There's way better editing on an average YouTube video. And the acting is bad, bad, bad. Oh, did I already said that? Well...that's how bad it is.

But by far the worst offender here is the script. Some truly ghastly experiments created some really nasty creatures. So the movie starts with a really lame "search & destroy" military operation going bad. 2 years later the site is home of a rave party (!) and a group of friends end up trapped underground. 2 yrs? 2 yrs!? That's it? So the government sends a black ops team to an underground military bunker and everyone dies. So naturally that's it. Game over. Let's just forget everything about that place and keep going. No "hey, maybe we should go and check if someone got out of there alive" or something? Nah. The creatures we wanted dead will probably die of old age. Why bother, right? And that's only the beginning. I'm not going to say anything else because I don't wanna spoil "the fun" for any masochist out there, willing to waste 80+ minutes watching this thing. But you have characters doing the most dumb and unreasonable things. A couple of veteran soldiers that display no real knowledge of military tactics or anything useful whatsoever, other than telling sad war stories. Characters pulling "facts" and knowledge out of thin air, knowing things there's no way they could possibly know. Things happening one minute and other things contradicting the first ones happening on the next minute without any sort of rational explanation. There's even a scene where a guy takes off his shirt and do almost nothing for 3+ minutes just to show his abs (seriously, there's no real reason for it, not even in the scene's context that demands quickness and taking off your clothes will waste very valuable time). And I'm not even going to mention the dreadful & incoherent ending. I've seen bad movies with bad scripts. But this is one of the worst ones. The story here is like something a teenager wrote for a high school essay. I can't believe a professional writer did such an awful job.

This movie has zero redeeming qualities. Not even a couple of one liners or some cool jokes here & there. It's just plain bad. With emphasis on the plain aspect. There's really no reason to watch it. Not even to make fun of it. -1/10

Unfinished

[jfilmer-544-494694 · 2/10 · 8 December 2011]

Being in the "biz" it was more or less evident to me that this film was unfinished and it's a shame that it was released this way since it had the potential to be a decent B horror flick.

Aside from some unremarkable acting (which is excusable when dealing with low budget horrors) the score and cinematography were competently executed. Make-up and special effects were decent aside from one horrendous CGI shot of snow. Where we get into trouble is in the edit.

An unforgivable number of scenes were disjointed and leaves the audience wondering "what is going on," "where am I now" or "who am I looking at?" I've seen such scenes before in what we call an assembly or rough cut. This is when the editor takes his/her first stab at a complete edit. It's usually after this that the production team gets a clear idea of what scenes need to be re-shot or what extra shots are needed to make the edit work or flow.

For whatever reason (lack of funding, actor availability, location no longer available, etc.) this was clearly not done which makes the film extremely frustrating to follow.

I recommend staying clear of this one. I'm a huge fan of horror films but I ended up fast forwarding the last 10 minutes just to get to the end because my brain got tired of trying to fill in the gaps.

utter rubbish

[doorsscorpywag · 1/10 · 12 December 2011]

Be warned this film is nothing at all like The Cave or The Descent. Both films had a story and employed actors. This tripe has neither. An elite special forces team goes into the base at the beginning and is wiped out. Years later a bunch of morons at a rave get trapped and somehow don't. The 'actors' look slightly bemused as people lose heads and arms and don't even seem that bothered shouting out their lines as if reading them from a card with as much emotion as a baseball bat. A copse of trees could out act this lot. A series of running about scenes interspersed with explanation scenes to keep you from complete boredom later we have the pointless last couple of minutes that may or may not signal a sequel. Not the worst movie ever made but has a damn good try at it. Awful from beginning to end.

The lack of lighting made the movie suffer horribly...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 3 June 2012]

"Underground" had potential to be great, but it never made it above less than mediocrity, sadly enough. Why? Well because of the lack of lighting. Now, I know that it was taking place in an underground bunker, but most of the scenes were so dark that it was hard to get a view of what was going on. Sure, it added to the realism of the lack of light far underneath the ground, but as a viewer of a movie, I would like to see what was going on. I didn't pay money to just sit around and look at poor-lit images all through an entire movie.

The story in "Underground" is the American government has been conducting secret experiments underground, gee - haven't we seen that before? And get this, of course there had to be some reference to notorious Dr. Mengele from World War II - just to add some diabolic twist to the storyline. Anyway, a bunch of young people are attending a rave at an abandoned military base - yep, you guessed it - the exact same military base where the government were conducting these inhuman experiments. After running afoul with gang-bangers, the people get trapped underground. But they aren't alone, they are being stalked by the genetically altered hybrids of man-beasts.

"Underground" had potential to be much more than it turned out to be. Don't get me wrong, the storyline - although cheesy and been seen numerous times before - wasn't all that bad. The storyline worked out well enough, and there was a great sense of claustrophobia and paranoia in the movie. But the complete lack of proper lighting really made the movie unbearable to sit through. Which was a shame.

As for the effects in the movie, well they were actually alright, and this subspecies of genetically altered humans were looking great. They did have that ferocious beastly quality to them. Just a shame they were mostly kept in the shadows or near-complete darkness most of the time.

"Underground" had a great ensemble of actors and actresses who did put on good performances. I think the only one I recognized in this movie was Jack Donner (playing Gunther). So it was nice to have a horror movie with a cast of fresh, new faces for a change.

Despite having potential, "Underground" never really kicked it off for me, because the lack of lighting really brought down the enjoyment of the movie. This style of keeping everything, and I do mean everything, in darkness is so early 1980's horror movie. It worked nicely back in the day, but today we want to see the dread and horror stalking us beneath the surface of the ground.

Uneven, drawn out but atmospheric with good effects

[amesmonde · 10 December 2011]

After a fight gets out of hand a group of friends run for cover but find themselves fighting for their lives against ravenous creatures lurking beneath their rave party.

Over dramatic, low budget horror flick that has some fantastic makeup and special effects in amongst the unnecessary fights,hammy dialogue and slow motion scenes.

Underground starts off very promising with the opening of an army squad fending off some nasty looking super genetic humanoids, then director Rafael Eisenman introduces us to an underground rave in an air hanger on a military base that goes on far too long. Writer Charles Morris Jr. borrows heavily from Marshall's Descent (2005) and Smith's Creep (2004).

Underground's weakest link is that it's not very tight and scenes are drawn out. It's well lit and shot with some good pumping tracks in the soundtrack.The score is a mixed bag there's some great music cues but then it borrows from familiar scores and overcooks them.

The young cast of actors including Eric Abercrombie and Mira Antonova do there best with the script. The Eli Wallach with a German accent lookalike aside - there's some nice touches, a creature bursting out of urinal, torn off ears, lobbed off arms, spooky tunnels and creepy corridors.

A lot of effort has clearly gone into Underground, it has a 'film' look and with some tighter editing it may have helped the viewing experience. Rafael Eisenman uses every film trick in the book and clearly has ability but it just isn't a polished enough production, nevertheless it's a lot bloodier, effective and atmospheric than the abundance of cheap looking horror DTV films.

Despite it's unevenness there's worst ways to burn a hour and a half.

Leave no man behind

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 5 July 2017]

"Gates to Hell: Underground" is the German release of "Underground." The film opens with a failed "search and destroy lock and load" operation against mole men. Two years later a rave is being held on top of that underground facility. After a fight and a chase we find eight (?) young adults trapped in said facility with the expected meet up of the ugly guy with bad teeth on the cover.

The production didn't shy away from overly impossible graphic scenes, some are mini plot spoilers on the German cover. The generator started up after sitting there for two years, a tribute to Woody Allen's VW scene in "Sleeper" no doubt. Our group of young adults were armed with sticks and knives, certainly superior weapons to the M-14's carried by the sissy army who couldn't kill them. However, our heroes had trouble subduing an octogenarian in a wheel chair with an IV and an eye patch.(Hint: Go in from his blind side.) The film is shot mostly in a dimly lit area with a greenish glow...like the cover.

The production is a straight forward hunt and kill film. No twist. Even when they discovered what the creatures were, it felt like a Scooby-doo moment. Gee, who would ever have thought of that.

Guide: F-word. Sex, No nudity

Incredibly bad

[grantss · 1/10 · 27 August 2020]

Very very bad. Derivative of so many mutant creature-horror movies, especially The Descent. Predictable, unoriginal, pointless.

Avoid.

Low Budget, Low rent for cast

[torstensonjohn · 3/10 · 22 August 2018]

A typical horror/action film that undercuts the budget and repels the audience by it's lack of direction. A group of young adults attend a rave, get chased into the underground and realize it is a Army bunker with only two ways out. What they don not see it that they are not alone.

The lighting and editing are very poorly done in this film, the storyboard very loose and unoriginal. NO outstanding performances, in fact most if not all seemed pushed and phoned in. I think the best part was the humanized creatures. The film had potential but quickly falls off pace. A misery of a 3 out of 10

A truly compelling piece of comedy gold

[seanfc · 10/10 · 8 November 2012]

When I sat down to watch this movie I wasn't sure what to expect but about 10 minutes I realised what I had found. This is with out a doubt a must see, something that should passed to future generations and persevered in the cinematic history for all eternity. As for the ending well I wont spoil it for you. Please take the time to watch this amazing piece of art. You will experience the true definition of side splitting laughter. The actors do a fantastic job one in particular Sophia Pernas who is an incredible actress and Im sure that she has a long and lustrous career ahead of her. Although within saying that a shower/sex scene wouldn't have gone a miss.

Similar to The Descent or The Cave in setting

[Thrill_KillZ · 7/10 · 7 December 2011]

When it started with a rave party I was wondering how this was gonna jump off, But it wasn't long before the situation turned ugly. The party just happened to be placed on top of an abandoned military bunker which served as the set for the entire film. The plot has a few problems but really managed to be an edge of your seat kind of movie, with lots of action and beasts that are highly developed & pretty damn scary. The end is done beautifully, It really has a true oh *beep* ending that makes you think. It wasn't as good as "The Descent" or "The Cave" but it still gives you that eerie feeling of trapped in pitch black with creatures hunting you. Definitely recommend to horror fans, it wasn't perfect but entertained till the end.

Not a horrible watch but not the best.

[narciso_lopez_jr · 4/10 · 26 December 2011]

Typical horror/survival movie, a bunch of young folk trapped in an underground army base, facing zombie like creatures, with super human powers. This "Sitting Duck " cast is an attractive lot. But they are void of any real acting skills and the script is no help what so ever. Of course they wander through darkness, argue with one another and no horror movie would be complete without the "Hey! Lets Split Up" routine, that never works in any fright film. Now the good news is, the movie is made very well and there are some interesting moments and very professional camera work. So Underground turns out to be a cut above ground, give it a watch. It reminded me a bit of "Descent" only not half as good.

Terrible acting.

[regkeane · 1/10 · 18 June 2016]

The acting in this is dreadful. The story is a big cliché. Nothing new or original. The actor playing Storm Johnson is by far the worst. He starts the film with a Stetson (cowboy hat) (Who goes to a rave in a Stetson? Cringy.) and his acting is way over the top. I'm guessing he went way over the top because he didn't feel comfortable in the role. A person of Arabic ethnicity playing a cowboy? I just counldn't get comfortable with that. They should have picked someone with the right ethnicity or changed the role to suite him. I'm guessing pc had some part in casting for this movie. Also the way over the top macho behavior is really offputing too. Again cringy. I am aware it is a B movie and the actors aren't going to be brilliant but it is hard to like a film where the actors are so bad in so many ways.

better watch girl have sex than having girl scare of horror

[d-ender85 · 4/10 · 25 February 2012]

what i thought is very awesome show. oh no is just a piece of crap. those guy never ever watch horror movie before. First, i summarize bunch of guys and girls enjoy party in US ARMY BIG WAREHOUSE AND BIG BASEMENT. As a girl butt has someone touch the trouble start and the trouble is keeping worse. So end out someone die kill by Intelligence mutant human being. So what the lesson we learn when from this show tell us DON'T SCREAM, DON'T FREAK OUT, DON'T SEX AND KISS in the underground. The babe is UN-sexy and no idea of acting. The rating is poor is much better if the intelligence mutant human being is a zombie and easily kill and the babes are dangerous and not easily scream as they sexy babe soldier.

Underaverage

[Stevieboy666 · 3/10 · 3 September 2020]

Some friends get into a nasty and potentially deadly fight at a rave, which just happens to be staged above a former US Military bunker. They escape into said bunker, which happens to be populated by a mad former WW2 Nazi scientist and his horrific mutant, killing machine mutants - or Trogs as he calls them. A previous attempt by Special Forces had failed to destroy these creatures, so what chance do our unarmed macho guys and hot chick girls have of survival? Well if you have nothing better to do and can can stomach 84 minutes of pretty weak acting, cheap effects, a dark, often shaky picture and complete unoriginality then Underground is what I call a once only view. There is plenty of action and it is pretty gory but the execution is far from good.

A real split in middle movie,some good aspects some not so good.

[djangozelf-12351 · 5/10 · 1 August 2015]

First of ...as a whole it kind of sucked but if you take it apart there are definitely some good examples were other directors could take notes and learn something from this movie.

Yes it has clichés but for half the movie it also breaks them and for me that really adds value to this horror flick.

Some things I really liked was that at a point they decided to stick together cause very often in other horrors they decide to split up to cover more ground and end up getting offed one by one.

Also one more than one occasion they still go after there friends in an attempt to save them in stead of going"well he or she is done for so F 'm".

Than there is also an explanation to how these creatures came to be and thats one of the scenes I will remember cause it looked really sick.

The setting was really good and despite the low light it had a real creepy atmosphere and made me think of the hellish look in "hell raiser"some times.

What bordered me most were the lot of inconsistencies this movie had and that were the parts that were kind of hard to swallow.

Especially the fact that a whole squadron got offed so easy and than some kids that just came from a rave can put up a better fight seems very far-fetched and also the strengths of the creatures seems to vary thru out the picture.

Thus I come to the conclusion that I made in the summary.

Its not a waste of time but its good to be cautious.

I hope this helps.

Military crew? Where?!

[takato0524 · 1/10 · 7 March 2021]

These kids are all supposed to be military or trained? 3 minutes in there's a fight and the fighting is worse than Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which I love). When the girl does a roundhouse kick on another girls face, I mentally checked out. I'm a former soldier. None of these attitudes or decision making is remotely military trained. Or any kind of trained. The over testosterone level guys are a bit much even for a Marine! All thumbs down, one star.

Avoid

[timothy-nickson · 1/10 · 29 June 2014]

This is one of the worst movies I have seen since Wes Cravens The Hills Have Eyes, it is a low budget rip off of The Decents. The acting is horrible, there are no characters to care about. I bought this second on blu ray real cheap, I thought I was getting a bargain but it is 84 minutes of my life I am never going to get back. There is only one gore scene in it that is good but it is only one, trust me this film is really stupid with stupid story, stupid characters and stupid cgi. It is not even worth the £1.50 I paid, I really was thing "oh please finish" The song at the end is OK I supposed, but take it from me you don't even want to watch it drunk, not even worth to put into Uwe Bolls bin.

Horror Movie Lovers Rare Gem!

[applegrrls · 10/10 · 3 April 2020]

I get comparisons to THE CAVE & DESCENT because they are remote setting rare gems with an all out fight to the death. This movie doesn't have anywhere near their budgets but it is a b-movie that's very well done. If you are a real horror lover, then you know this genre is guilty of some of the worst made crap at times. This film has good action scenes, excellent creature makeup, good acting, and a claustrophobic locale. This is why we wade through the crap. Because we live for these kinds of rare gems.

really not bad at all

[hopla68 · 6/10 · 29 June 2012]

We all known this story. genetically altered monsters lurk in the dark and a bunch of twenty somethings are being preyed upon. Especially in the 80's and 90's i could rent a film like this on good old VHS almost every week.

Nothing much has changed plot-wise or execution wise; however there are a few standouts produced between then and now and with this film the descent comes to mind.

what makes this film somewhat different from countless others is the fact that it takes a while ( almost too long) before our group is able to fight back. when that moment comes though we are given some intens and claustrophobic fight outs that make the most of the limited budget.

There is a flow in this movie that makes it work, there is no light note to be found, its all played very seriously ( which is a refreshing turn). There are enough claustrophobic and tense moments to keep your attention.

there are a few bad points of course; 1 it takes a long time before the group fights back, which means that for most of the movie they are just running, getting grabbed and getting munched on. 2 the evul doctor side plot is not needed and is a distraction; i mean they even gave the guy a zjerman accent.. way too much. 3 could have been edited a little tighter, 10 minutes less of running and screaming wouldn't have hurt the movie at all.

All in all a recommended timewaster. especially if you see the menu consists nowadays of Sci-FI orginals and indie flicks that are a disgrace to the viewer.

A capable sci-fi/horror story that is up to the task of entertaining true genre fans.

[mecheart · 9/10 · 25 May 2013]

I went into this one completely blind - without viewing the trailer or reading a synopsis; that was a good thing.

The first few scenes cry "Facility Shooter" with depictions of a heavily armed military squad entering an underground structure to engage some kind of genetic experiment gone haywire. When done properly - as in this film - a true fan of science fiction/horror requires little more to wet his appetite.

We fast forward a couple of years and the script introduces us to a pair of Marine Corps buddies just back from a combat tour, a lifelong buddy of one of them and, two girls he apparently grew up with. The final of the main characters is also a Marine - I presume. She is introduced as a doctor the Caucasian Marine met while in theater.

Just after the friends' reunion at a crowded rave held on an old military base is completed, one of the Marines gets into a brawl with a gangbanger, swiftly incapacitates his foe and wins the wrath of the rest of the banger's crew. I enjoyed this scene as, it is far too often in horror or thriller genre films these days that male leads and supporting protagonists are portrayed as wimps.

The two Marine buddies put up an impressive fight against multiple gang members until the bad guys rally their numbers and pull out the guns. Our party of heroes and supporting cast make a run for it and manage to shut out their pursuers on the other side of a steel door, but at the cost of finding themselves locked in and trapped deeper inside the facility. Yes, it is the same facility from the beginning of the movie, and thus begins the horror and campy sci-fi as the premise runs its course.

As a rabid horror and science fiction fan, I thoroughly enjoy the concept of forgotten or decommissioned unconventional military weaponry locked away in some claustrophobic underground bunker just waiting for a trespassing civilian to unleash. Hence the premise of 'Underground' and in my opinion, a premise rich with possibility.

As the aforementioned premise is explored by the quite capable cinematography, script and acting, we get to know our characters and I for one, began to care about them even though a few of them are immediately snatched away from us. The story unfolding as I had expected, I really began to wish these two Marines had decided on different way, or rather place, to celebrate their return from the war.

Once again, if you are a fan of the combination of horror, science fiction and thriller with some action added for spice, you will definitely appreciate where 'Underground' is coming from and where it takes you. As do many other films of the genre, 'Underground' asks you "What if?" "What if you unexpectedly found yourself trapped a few stories below ground, pursued by a lethal opposing force?" "What would you do different?"

I love it. Opens the mind and makes one think and experience fear right along with the characters on screen.

Some have complained about the lighting in this film. I suspect they must have watched bad internet versions, as the lighting on the Blue Ray is just adequate enough to thoroughly reveal the goings on - start to finish.

Special effects are great. A minimum of GGI was used, thus younger viewers may not appreciate the skill of the effects crew as much as one such as myself who grew up before the computer generated film effects revolution.

Overall, 'Underground' is a highly entertaining entry in the horror and science fiction hybrid genre. It is a film that will most appeal to serious fans of said genre, but should be well enough received by most any horror fan.

I wholeheartedly recommend this film and subtract two stars only for the use of young people in yet another desperate survival situation. However, I give one star back for the inclusion of combat veterans as the two main characters, and the obvious use of an effective military adviser by the writer/director.

If you get a chance check this one out.

When you thinhk it's over, it's not

[staunton-gary · 6/10 · 18 October 2020]

Above average, just. Lot's of screaming girls. Some dialog is quiet and difficult to hear, if you turn up the volume, be prepared for a jump when the creature screams. I would watch it again.

Down Among The Dead Men

[pantagruella · 6/10 · 25 May 2015]

Eight young people flee from trouble at a disco and get stuck in an old military bunker hiding an abandoned black project. This film delivers according to the parameters of the synopsis.

There is some military experience amongst the trapped folk, some sanity, some reasoning. There are some good words in the script too.

The middle section is fast and furious when bad things turn up. As another reviewer mentioned the mood of very serious. You wouldn't bet on anyone making it out alive.

I can't find fault with any aspect of the film. They could easily rework this to be part of a sequel to Mad Max: Fury Road.

The moral of this story is that bad people perform bad experiments and it's not very nice to clean all that up.