Not so much a yawning gulf as an engulfing yawn.
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It takes every ounce of restraint not to use the word "abysmal" when summarizing
The Cave
, a late-summer sci-fi/horror/thriller mish-mash with murky cinematography and not a single performance worthy of note.
The Cave
isn't content merely to reference a cavernous hole deep in the Carpathian mountains-though its location alone might have warned off the film's protagonists (the Carpathians never did anything good for Jonathan and Mina Harker); or maybe the ancient tile mural depicting Knights Templar being devoured by horrific demons might have given them pause. But no, they are not deterred in the least; an exploratory team of cocksure divers plummets cheerily down into the cave's gaping mouth, at which point one of their number promptly sets off an underwater boulder avalanche trapping them all inside. We of the audience happen to know that another group of inquisitive souls disappeared in the cave some 30 years previously, so we aren't too surprised when the divers begin to discover old bootlaces and vintage flashlights, musing disingenuously aloud as to their owners' whereabouts.
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The present-day diving team is fairly standard issue: There's the handsome, commanding but slightly scary leader (Cole Hauser of
Tigerland
and
2 Fast 2 Furious
); his torridly handsome younger brother (
Third Watch
's Eddie Cibrian); a dangerously mutinous upstart who's nonetheless reasonably handsome (Rick Ravanello); a charming English rose of a biologist (Lena Headey); Dr. Nikolai, the dotty scientist responsible for this insane expedition (Marcel Iures); a feisty young female diver/climber who gets to utter exuberances such as, "Dude, this is sick!" (
Coyote Ugly
's Piper Perabo); and assorted other less attractive individuals we know immediately are doomed to be cave-fodder.
Be assured that it will happen with great explosions and yellings. In large part,
The Cave
fails so miserably because its writers insist on piling up as many horrors as possible; their profiled geographical feature also hosts an underground river, complete with bone-cracking rapids and waterfall, a half-dozen rock walls (totally sick!) of several thousand feet apiece which must be climbed hastily and with a minimum of correct gear placements, an apparent glacial face (with attendant icy crevasse) and a subterranean chamber of fire. As if all this weren't ominous and geologically perplexing enough, the cave's star attraction seems to be a very large carnivorous insectoid or reptilian something-or-other which lurks obviously in the shadows, although for some reason our heroes cannot hear its near-deafening clicking and scuttling sounds until it's practically slathering them with honey mustard and mayo. Finally, the team members brawl manfully amongst themselves, usually at the most inconvenient of moments (see large carnivorous something-or-other, above).
Presumably the script, if there was one, was written by a committee of tired humanities undergraduates. How else to explain the dialogue ("Respect the cave!" and "We're all hurtin', man") and the scientific travesties, ranging from a superpredator whose survival depends on the infrequent arrival of cave divers to the existence of female biologists with fabulous haircuts. Frankly, the only reason to subject yourself to
The Cave
is to emerge from the theater grateful to be above ground and dry.
