Kate (Franka Potente) has just left one party to head for another late-nighter rumored to have George Cloony in attendance. Unable to hail a cab quick enough, she opts for the subway and with a little time left before her train arrives, she sits on a bench and promptly falls asleep. When she wakes up, she finds that not only has she missed her train, she is also alone and locked in. As she contemplates what to do next, an empty train shows up, which she immediately boards. Her relief at not having to spend the night on a subway platform is quickly replaced by terror when she realizes she is being stalked. Not by the guy who has followed her from the party with a bit of cocaine in his nose and rape on his mind, but rather something much, much worse.

I LOVELove reviews horror films that take place underground. Makes no difference where. Sewers, caves, subway system. If it is below the surface then I’m gonna give it a shot and watch it. Some of all time favorite horror takes place underground. Films like My Bloody ValentineMy Bloody Valentine reviews, AlligatorAlligator reviews and The DescentThe Descent reviews. I dig any film in which victims are trapped in dark, dangerous locations you gotta climb out of. You throw in a subway system, then even better as something about an empty subway platform and the associated tunnels just make for a good setting in any horror flick. Raw Meat, An American Werewolf in LondonAn American Werewolf in London reviews, CloverfieldCloverfield reviews – a few examples of films that have used empty subway locations to good effect. I relay all this info because I hope it explains why I came away slightly disappointed with Christopher Smith’s (SeveranceSeverance reviews, the upcoming Triangle) romp through the dark tunnels of the London Underground system.

But it didn’t start out that way. The first half was a treat. Not only do I get to see Franka Potente (Run, Lola, Run) star in a film again – although she is completely unlikable in the first half and her hair looks like someone exhaled 3 cartons of cigarettes through it – but it opened strong with an effectively creepy scene featuring two workers inside a sewage tunnel. It does a a really good job of setting up the film, and me being a tunnel rat, excited at where they were gonna take things. And at first, the film lives up those expectations. Abandoned subway platforms with the fluorescent lights, unfamiliar metal clangs echoing throughout the dark, rat-filled tunnels, screams from the darkness emitted from people meeting terrifying fates. It’s all there and it’s all good. Then we meet the villain.

He’s not a disappointment, necessarily, it’s just at this point is also when the film changes. See, up to now, The CreepCreep reviews has remained relatively hidden. Not even a glimpse of him aside from the pack of rats that followed him wherever he went. But once he is revealed, he is revealed in his entirety and never hidden again. Don’t get me wrong, he is creepy in a Gollum-mixed-with the–creature-from-DescentDescent reviews kinda way and displaying some good, practical makeup effects complete with crooked spine and sores all over his body. But once that mystery is over, coupled with the film shifting gears into a paint-by-numbers stalk and slash, the film just kinda coasts along until it ends. I feel The Creep could have been a more effective creature had he been accompanied by a few more of his kin instead of him acting solo. Alone he is formidable to be sure, but it was kinda hard to suspend disbelief when thinking of how his scrawny ass was able to kill the number of people he does with relative ease. But even this wasn’t the one thing that killed the film for me.

It was the fact that during the time Kate is being pursued by The Creep in the tunnels, we see that this man-thing has quite a setup. He has a sewer prison he uses to contain the people he catches (to do what with we are never quite told), he has keys to locks to other tunnels, he has a bedroom full of toys, he has a pit where he keeps and feeds his rats and lastly – he has a fully stocked operating room he uses to perform surgery. This room is no joke, either. It is complete with a all the tools needed to perform a wide range of medical procedures including scrubs and an assortment of nasty cutting instruments. Now let’s go ahead and assume that it was logical for all of these facilities to be linked together by subway tunnels for some reason. But the fact that he has operated down there with all of this stuff without ever being noticed is just too ludicrous – even for a horror fan like me who occasionally expects to swallow gobs of bullshit while watching a horror film.

Now if you don’t care about all that, and are just looking looking for some gore, the film has a bit of it. Nothing too shocking or nasty, although the scene of The Creep playing surgeon on an unlucky victim was pretty intense. Not because of what they showed, but because of what he was doing and what he was doing it with with. The wet sound effects that went along with his actions didn’t hurt. You also get some throat slashings and a wicked head impalement you see coming a mile away. These scenes help keep the film watchable during this portion, but do not save the film overall. The inability to suspend disbelief, the fact that the characters in the end-game fall victim to every horror movie cliche in the book against a foe that doesn’t seem to be too difficult to take out if needed and some terrible editing during the finale just weigh everything down. If you can catch it via Netflix and don’t have anything better to do, I’d say go ahead and try it out as it is not horrible. Horror fans like me, who love the setting, I say the same – just don’t set your expectations too high.

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