2005

People who are not scientists or vigilante billionaires, but still choose to explore caves….why? The things that are down there spent so many evolutionary reiterations trying to get away from you AND sunlight, and you just go in there with your headlamps and flares and crunchy granola bars and mess with their vibe. They don’t want you there, and this documentary about caves is evidence.

It’s not really a documentary, but I don’t care. Leave the caves alone.

Six extremely attractive women from the UK decide to explore a cave in the Appalachian mountains for a weekend girls trip. If I EVER say that my “weekend girls trip” involves the words “Appalachia” or “spelunking” or “pre-dawn car ride,” I want you all to know I’ve been kidnapped and to call the police. The women know each other, but some better than others. You’ll have to forgive me, but British people all look alike, but I’m pretty sure two are sisters, one is possible the lover of another, and three were best friends before a tragic, gruesome accident one year prior.

They follow all the rules about caving (I know that’s not the correct word, but the other one is hard to spell over and over). They have all the correct gear, file a report with the rangers, remind each other of the procedures, and read up on the cave that’s been explored by thousands of people before. Except it’s the wrong cave. And one of the women (Juno) knew this and did it on purpose. Because she wanted to claim this “unexplored” cave as her own and possibly name it after herself or one of the other ladies. Fucking British and their innate need to still colonize everything.

Of course, it’s not just that the cave has been unexplored and therefore unknown, it’s also inhabited by a sub-human species that knows privileged British ladies are delicious. But throughout the women’s harrowing ordeal of trying to escape the slimy Bat Boy cosplayers, you realize that in the darkness, we all become a little sub-human. There’s a LOT of backstabbing (literally), secrets spilled over how shitty they all are, and a lot sacrificing each other as bait. In the end, the comradery that existed before their trip was obviously bullshit. You don’t need an infrared camera to see that.

By the middle of the movie, I was over it. Mostly because the jump scares and gross ways to maim with caving hooks got tiresome. I was also mildly disappointed the ladies didn’t try to work together against the fine young cannibals. I guess when a girls trip starts with a lie, it’s hard to reel that back in.

One final note that I was very happy to read: they didn’t film in any underground caverns. It was all a set. So thankfully, no actual caves were harmed in the making of this movie that’s almost exactly like another movie that came out a few months later.

Scare Rating: 6 out of 10 ghosts