What the hell? *spoilers*
Just finished watching this movie on Horror Channel.
Now, okay, I know horror movies tend to attract cheesy nonsense plots, and we all know the cliché of "don't go in there alone", but... come on... what the hell?
Huge basement. It's okay to send a child there unassisted. And when he doesn't come back - through a moment of mindless negligence - have the other one go down there on her own. Smart.
Speaking of which, can anybody point me to a cute young girl who, upon seeing a trail of blood, would be "gee, I wonder where this goes?". If I was her, I'd pause momentarily to fill my pants, then I wouldn't stop running until I was in the arms of a VERY heavily armed police officer.
What's with the flickery torches? Surely if some sort of pulse/suck/whatever was able to knock out the torches, it would trash the batteries - end of torch.
Earthquakes. Isn't it customary to get under a table or something, not just sit there and wonder how many it's been so far?
You're running for your life, evil nasty (fake looking) creatures abound. Yeah, this is a really good moment to snog and break away from the group for a bit of lovey-dovey. Hell, just rip off your clothes and do it in front of the rest, you're gonna die anyway...
The monsters. Oddly humanoid pseudo-scorpion things. Just like Star Trek letting most of the alien species be human-like for budgetary reasons, these monsters are very obviously guys in latex suits. With no money for facial animatronics. The monsters in "Alien" were an obvious influence, and they were bladder-joltingly scary because of the animated face. Slime, moving parts, expressions. You could totally believe that the thing was real and wasn't looking to become best friends. The monsters in this movie... um... had eyes that blinked once in a while, and that looked a bit CGIish.
The basement. I believe the guy's words were "it's gonna be pitch black in there so stick together". Cut to a scene of said basement with visible shadows where everybody looks for the kids by walking in different directions. What can I say?
As it happens, the girl somehow must have managed to climb the lift shaft (her age/size? that height? in those shoes? are you kidding me?) and put herself in the elevator car; and then when eventually rescued, she hugs her mom. Ahhhhh... But wait, this is the same mom who, after discovering her son dead and after blowing out the brains of the creature, doesn't go back to look for her daughter. Some parental love, that.
The ending. One of the few moments in the movie where the actors managed a decent expression of shocked confusion. I guess they were able to rehearse that expression while reading the script. Shame really, as it wasn't a shock. I could see that ending coming from miles off.
For those that proclaim this as the worst movie ever. Whoa. You're new to this genre! :-) It's a pretty poor script, but there are worse movies. My personal worst movie ever is "The Psychotronic Man". This doesn't even come close this the level of suck of that film.
Call me crazy, but I'd kinda like to see a follow-up to this. Now we're down to mom, cutie, and fat nerdy guy - we've shed the annoying characters. And it looks like we'll need to shed the apartment block. Is this LA or is this worldwide? Dammit, the movie lasted for about 1h12, that's *short*. Where's the rest? In my mind, what follows next is a blend of Resident Evil (before it got crap), Silent Hill, Alien, and Highschool of the Dead (err, without the fanservice). I'm sure you can see where I'm going here... Yummy!