Underground

Film: Underground

Year: 2023

Director: Lars Janssen

Writers: Lars Janssen and Charlotte Dawn Potter

Starring: Charlotte Dawn Potter, Caitlyn Barber and Nadia Dawber

Review:

This is a movie that I discovered when searching for 2024 releases for featured reviews on Journey with a Cinephile: A Horror Movie Podcast. There wasn’t a horror movie showing at the theater and I knew that this made its festival rounds in 2023. It hit Screambox for 2024 so I went ahead and chose this to check out.

Synopsis: after a wild bachelorette party, a group of women find themselves trapped in an underground bunker complex. A disturbing finding turns their night into an absolute nightmare. Will they be able to escape from this concrete maze?

We start this with a press conference. Chief Inspector Hamilton (Andrew T Hislop) relays what he can. There is a reporter who presses for more and questions if this deals with the haunting of a local underground hospital. The chief inspector won’t even entertain the idea. What we learn is that three people are still missing from this ordeal.

That is when we go into the past to see what led us to that conference. Ella (Maaike Tol) is getting married. She is dress shopping with her friends. This is leading up to them going on a bachelorette party. We see that Claire (Nadia Dawber) stole her mother’s camera to recap as much of this night as she can. She goes to pick up Ella and they seek out Jessica (Caitlyn Barber). She is a singer and is in the studio when they show up. From here, they go watch Ziggy (Sapphire Brewer-Marchant) during soccer practice. She then joins them as they go up the last member of this group, Riley (Charlotte Dawn Potter). She had to fly in as she moved away for work.

Now their plan is to go to a bar dressed up in different things. Ziggy is a frog, Jess is a dog, Riley was given a chef costume where Ella is a receptionist and Claire has another, but I don’t recall what it is. They have a good time, knocking back drinks. This becomes a problem when they upset their taxi driver, Dave (Dave King). Jess gets sick in Riley’s wig. He is irate and the second time is enough.

Where he lets them out is near this underground hospital. It is supposed to be haunted. Ziggy takes the challenge to knock on the gate three times. As they walk away, there is a thudding that seemed to be in response. It spooks them so they hurry to get back to their hotel. That becomes a problem when Ziggy falls through a hatch and breaks her leg. They go down to help her and end up trapped. This is just the start of their nightmare as they try to find a way out. Ziggy disappears and they discover what looks to be a Satanic ritual. This just starts a series of supernatural events that doesn’t seem to have an end or way out.

That is where I’ll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start is that there are great aspects here that caught my attention. I like the idea of giving this press conference where bits of information are leaked. This set the tone, but also made me think certain things as well. With that, I love how we set up our group of characters. We get to know each one, which is good. Where they get trapped is great as I’m a big fan of movies that feature underground places. Coupling with that the supernatural and Nazis, I was curious as to how this would play out.

Where I want to start then is with delving a bit more into this group. I like that there are subtle things introduced here. Ella is getting married and from something Claire said, she might be the only one for a while. I’m getting the idea that Ziggy is a lesbian from how she is presented. Jess might be inclined that way as well or at least curious. Riley has grown distance due to moving away for work. Claire’s life might be falling apart but keeping up a good façade. How they show this was interesting when it comes to the costumes. Using a bachelorette party to get them together is good as well. It explains why they’re out and intoxicated, as well as how they get trapped.

Now I do need to shift to a negative here. This should be good and work. It uses the idea that there could have been a Satanic ritual down here. It also seems like they are using real ideas and elements of what people have claimed have happened in this location. It falls short though and I found this boring. Not much happens. Different characters will meet people who seem to be ghosts. This could be Nazis or people used as slave labor before tunnels collapsed. This makes for eerie things when they’re on the screen. It is just too much time between things happening and it doesn’t carry the needed tension for me. I struggled to stay interested unfortunately.

I think here I’ll go over to filmmaking. The setting is great. Once we get into the tunnels and this place, which seems to have been converted into a museum. That all works. I love movies that take place underground like this. Your phones don’t work right, which makes sense. Then you add in a haunting or the supernatural, that adds to it as well. Now this is filmed in the style of found-footage. I don’t believe they’d keep filming. Also, their phones seem to have unlimited battery for what they’re using them for. This takes away realism for me. I do think what they well with effects though was good. The cinematography is also solid as they use depth of focus and having things happen behind characters. That freaks me out. Other than that, I think they use the sound design well. There are times when characters hear talking in foreign languages. Not understanding adds to the atmosphere. That is something else I’ll credit. There is music here that also takes away from the realism of ‘found footage’.

I’ll then finish acting. I’ve already said that I like our group of women. Part of what this is playing with is that characters get mad at each other to help separate them. I like that Brewer-Marchant, Potter, Barber, Dawber and Tol all feel like a real group of friends who have known each other for years. Hislop, Dave Hyett and the other reporters at the press conference are good at setting the stage. There are a group of teens who appear later in the movie. I like how they factor in. King is also good in his limited role as a taxi driver. Overall, I’d say that the acting was good. They feel like real people, which you need for found footage films.

In conclusion, I think there’s a good set up here. I love the location where our characters get trapped. Then having them deal with what could be a haunting and potentially a demon is good. I even think the explanation of what traps them works. My problem is that not much happens. There are long stretches where we use the location and the darkness to build tension. That only goes so far. I will say that this is well-made. They build a good atmosphere with cinematography, framing and sound design. The acting is good to bring the characters to life. I just felt that I needed more in the end. I’d recommend this to fans of the found footage films. If you don’t like this sub-genre or filming style, avoid this one.

My Rating: 6 out of 10