Underground - New Release Review
Director: Lars Jannsen
Starring: Nadia Dawber, Maaike Tol, Caitlyn Barber, Charlotte Dawn Potter, Sapphire Brewer-Merchant
Written by: Charlotte Dawn Potter, Lars Jannsen
Produced by: Lars Jannsen, Charlotte Dawn Potter
Cinematography by: Lars Jannsen
Original Score by: Herman Witkam
Synopsis:
After a wild bachelorette party a group of young women find themselves trapped in an underground bunker complex and their night turns into a nightmare as they struggle to escape the vast concrete maze.
Thoughts:
Working as a found footage survival horror film, 'Underground' does try it's best at times but sadly it's just a tad too slow and laborious to really be effective.
A group of five friends have gotten together for Ella's hen party, a mad night out on the town that involves the customary hotel stay, alcoholic beverages and plenty of dancing. It starts off just fine. Ella is joined by Claire, Jess and Ziggy and they then meet Riley at the airport, who has flown back to Guernsey from her fast life in London to join the festivities. As part of Ella's gift, Claire has promised to document the entire weekend by recording everything on her parents camera.
The girls hit the town and the night is coming close to ending when, after being sick in the taxi home, the group are dumped at the side of a deserted road and don't quite know which way to go back to the hotel. They take a short-cut through a field and Ziggy falls down a hole into a tunnel below. The field is above a notorious abandoned bunker that served as a Nazi hospital during WWII and now the other girls must go down to help Ziggy. They become trapped inside and must make their way around the labyrinth of tunnels to find an exit. As they look for a way out it soon becomes apparent that something supernatural is keeping them down in the bunker and slowly driving them insane.
'Underground' isn't entirely original and it doesn't really make a lot of sense. The best found footage films are the ones that use the concept as part of the story narrative and one that serves an actual purpose instead of just an excuse to create a cheap horror film. And it should also use the concept to create scary moments by building tension and not just relying on shaky camera work. While there was some creepy imagery used like mannequins and derelict sleeping quarters, honestly I don't remember any moments that were genuinely scary.
It does have some upsides. The cast are mostly all great and while their characters aren't fully realised, the dynamic in the group is nice to watch. Some of the girls do get a bit annoying by the time they leave the taxi and as always with these type of films we have to just accept that logic tends to get thrown out the window at times. The actual found footage aspect of the film just doesn't serve any sort of purpose here.
I loved the location (which I believe is a real bunker) and the atmosphere created definitely has a sinister vibe to it. When the group get to the part of the bunker where they hear a phone ringing behind a glass case, I thought we were going to go in a certain direction but then nothing happened. Most of the film is just the group splitting up and then trying to find each other again by aimlessly shouting each other's names. The occult and ghosts are flirted with however not fully explored in great detail but I did appreciate how the girls just went with it and accepted that none of what they were experiencing was normal. It could've been so easy for them to eventually lose their mind so it was refreshing that they didn't.
'Underground' feels like it had great potential but never really satisfies with a rewarding pay-off and ultimately just left me with guttural feeling of disappointment.
Verdict: ⭐️⭐️
-Gavin Logan
'Underground' is released on UK Digital on February 26th and available to stream in the US on ScreamBox