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58%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #3,033
...out of 20,875 movies
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Heading home late one night after a party, Kate falls asleep while waiting for her train. She awakens to find herself trapped in the London underground, with all the doors locked for the evening. While being attacked by a co-worker who has followed her, a mysterious unseen creature drags him away and kills him. This begins a terrifying ordeal, as Kate and a young homeless couple are stalked through the dark tunnels by something dangerous with payback on its mind.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: January 3, 2006
Tonight's feature film takes place in the bowels of London's Underground and the connecting sewer systems. It all begins when Kate (Franka Potente) decides to take the midnight train across town to meet up with her celebrity idol George Clooney and get a little more than an autograph from him, if you know what I mean. The next train is due to arrive at the station in eight minutes, so she has a seat and does what any young lady on her way to meet Mr. Clooney would do... she pulls out a small bottle of vodka and starts chugging. Before she knows it, she's passed out on this bench, and when she comes to, she finds that she has missed her train. Worse still, she finds out that she is locked inside of the terminal for the evening with seemingly nobody around.
Things get a bit weirder when a train pulls into the station, and after Kate boards it looking for help, she finds out that there isn't a living soul aboard. Well, that's not entirely true... she soon comes across Guy (Jeremy Sheffield), a man that had been bugging her to go out on a date in the opening scenes of the movie. It turns out that he followed her here with visions of sweet lovin' on his mind, but Kate quickly points out that she has zero interest in him. With cocaine in his nose and a raging hard-on in his pants, Guy wastes no time in attempting to rape our heroine of the film. His plan is "cut" a bit short, however, when an unseen assailant pulls him out of the train and proceeds to maul him mercilessly. Obviously a bit disturbed by this mauling, Kate high-tails it back to the terminal in search of an escape from the murderous being on the tracks. Although Kate has a bit of help from sewage worker George (Vas Blackwood) and young homeless couple Jimmy (Paul Rattray) and Mandy (Kelly Scott), the majority of the running time deals with Kate attempting to escape both the terminal and this blood-thirsty... thing.
First things first with this review - the storyline. Prior to watching the movie, I had heard a lot of criticism regarding the way things unfold and the amount of unanswered questions left for the viewer when all was said and done. Honestly, I didn't see many problems here... certainly not enough to warrant the "worst movie ever!" remarks that I've seen on certain other sites. While I will admit that the film requires the viewer to piece together the clues for him or herself and come to a few conclusions on their own, the overall storyline behind the movie is easy enough to comprehend. Yes, there are a few unanswered questions when the credits start to roll, but I agree with director Christopher Smith on this account: it's a much more satisfying movie when you don't get everything spelled out for you and when you have to come to your own conclusions about the back-story of this creature. I wouldn't have complained had he chosen to include said back-story, but I saw absolutely no problems with the route he chose to take in his film, and I actually found that it seemed to take a small amount of inspiration from the structure of Asian horror. Fans of the cut-and-dry American style of horror may be turned off by this style of film, but personally, I enjoy it immensely.
<Slight Spoilers>
I also enjoyed how Smith chose to make the villain slightly sympathetic for the audience instead of thrusting him into the camera as a horrid thing that has nothing but murder on its mind. Even though you clearly see that its the villain and is deserving of a quick death, you can't help but feel a little sorry for it after you find out a bit about it. I'd hate to have to put up a Severe Spoiler alert before I've even closed out the Slight Spoiler alert, so I shall leave it at that... but again, I thought that this approach definitely worked out well for this movie.
</Slight Spoilers>
All of the movie takes place in one of three locations - aboard a train, in the terminal (or on the tracks), and inside the sewers. While there's not much you can do to build the atmosphere on the train (though there are a few surprises), the mood is perfectly set in each of the other two locations. Claustrophobia is a big part of the tone here, and the viewer really starts to feel dirty watching the cast-members make their way through this sewer. It all looks quite authentic and does an excellent job of putting you in the shoes of these characters and giving you a bit of insight as to why they're doing what they're doing. I particularly enjoyed the pitch-black scenes that were lit only with a small flashlight held by Kate. These scenes, in my eyes, really pulled the chills out and gave you the impression that anything could happen at any time... and often enough, it did.
Fans of horror films should give this one a viewing. It's a damned fine movie, and it serves up more than its share of scares and "Holy shit" moments. While I don't think that it'll be getting any year-end awards from yours truly, it's a good enough movie that I'm going to call it a must-see film for you horror junkies. 8/10.
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#1:
ScarsRstarS
- added January 10, 2006 at 9:04am
This film i went to watch at the flicks and it
sucked in my eyes.
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#2:
Ginose
- added March 30, 2010 at 4:07pm
I don't know what the other guy said, but this was
a pretty bad-ass picture. I'd watch it a few more
times, just to see a genuinely good horror film
and remind myself that the world of modern horror
is still worht defending.
8.5/10
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