In the mountains of Romania, a cave of epic proportions has been found. As news of the find make the rounds, a group made up of researchers and explorers are set to be the first to go into the cave and send back the first reports from deep inside of the earth. Something will find them first, though. Trapped, lost, terrified and now hunted, the group must try and find a way back to the surface before they are picked off one by one in the depths of The Cave.

The Cave is an eerie film in many ways, eerie in atmosphere, eerie in the way the creatures seem like the ones from Pitch Black and eerie in the way the story follows the one in Leviathan. The Cave isn’t that bad, it just isn’t that good either.

This film tries hard; it has great sets, astounding underwater sequences and a fairly good cast. I have to admit the more things I see Cole Hauser in, the more I like him. But the creatures and unoriginal aspects of the story really take away from the impact of the film.

The creature effects were kind of a mixed bag. The up-close shots look pretty good and the creatures have a semi-formidable look to them, but the long range or action shots are really shoddy CGI at best. The beasties do, however, make a cool noise and we get quite a few “monster view” looks that I always find amusing.

Another thing that really bugged me about this flick was that in the first half hour of the movie all we get are lame attempts to set up the deaths of characters. Everybody’s camera, light or recorder all seem to go down at one time or another, but they always seem to pop back up after another member of the cast says “Are you there?” about five times.

The Cave also does one of the things I hate in movies where a human can fall a thousand feet, land on their face, get up and dust themselves off and act like nothing hurt them, but if a monster slaps them with a glancing blow they die. Damn I hate that.

As the flick goes along, the group of explorers are picked off one by one as the science guy unravels the nature of the beasts. It’s nothing new and most of you will figure out the ending and what’s happening before the movie hits the half hour mark, but it’s still a fun little film.

I think if you like movies like Leviathan or The Thing you may like many parts of this one, but it just seems as if we’ve seen it all already at one time or another.

5 of 10