Time Spent Watching Movies

Time Spent Watching Movies 3 Days 14 Hours 23 Minutes

Friday, October 19, 2012

Special! Movie # 69 The Tunnel

The Tunnel (2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1735485/

First time viewers keep pouring in and this time they're from Serbia and Rwanda. You might be asking yourselves "What makes this post special?".  The answer to that is other than the number and my level over immaturity, nothing.  I thought jumping around horror genres has been working well but The Tunnel is a movie that I've heard is worth watching so I'm bucking the trend and going with three out of four Aussie movies.  Should be the last for the month so there's no reason to fret if you think things are getting stale.

The who movie is on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVQrozMTWlY so if you want to just skip down to my rating and see what I think before reading a big summery, go for it.  Also if it sucks, the rating might save you an hour and a half too.  Time to go onwards and downwards.

Things aren't starting off well.  There is a 911 call by a hysterical woman that cuts off followed by long, boring credits.  There is a "water crisis" in Australia (sweet writing) and the government is setting up a new reservoir to fix them problem.  Underground tunnels are going to be used as a part of that which is a bummer for the homeless folks that live in them.  The following 15 minutes is used to introduce us to the new crew that is investigating which is made up of the reporter (Natasha), producer (Peter), cameraman (perfect teeth) and sound guy (Jim).  They are investigating what is happening to the homeless people from the tunnels going missing.

One homeless man who used to live in the tunnels goes mental when he is asked what happened down there.  Hopefully it won't be a total letdown.  Could be anything right now, zombies, mole men or even terrible tasting onion people.  Natasha gets the run around from the suits down at city hall about the whole situation so one night they break into the tunnels to get the story really going.  It's massive inside of there and Natasha says that they were used as air raid shelters during WWII.  Didn't think there were any air raids on Australia because of where they were but after looking it up, the Japanese did hit them a few times.  At least this movie got me to learn something today.

They start filming one shot in front to the giant underground "lake" and the sound guy keeps hearing whispering picked up on the mic.  Not good.  Also this movie is shot like Lake Mungo in that there are people being interviewed today spliced in with the video of when they were in the tunnel.  It is worth noting that teeth and Natasha are the only ones being interviewed.  That could mean there's trouble ahead for Pete and Jim.  In one room there is a giant bell that was used to alert people of incoming bombings.  Now it's probably used to awaken succubi (possibly the plural word for succubus).  Because the bell is so loud, Jim has to go into the an adjacent room to hear it on the mic.  When it is rang for the third time, something off camera rips Jim away and the rest of the crew rushes off in search of him.  Oh Teeth also heard something weird when the bell was rung but hasn't said what yet.

That only took a minute because they give Natasha a head set so she can listen to what teeth heard and it sounds like someone yelling/moaning/shrieking/groaning in the creepiest way.  In the search for Jim, they pass a door with a radioactive symbol on it and there you go.  Must be mutants.  They go back into the bell room to get their flashlights and other gear only to find that everything has been taken.  We are still following the crew to find Jim and I would say that my creeped out meter is at about a 4.0.  In a dark, underground, claustrophobic place with light limited to one battery and one quarter of the crew is missing after being dragged away by a eerie noise.  Then they walk into a room with blood stains all over the walls.  Straight to a 6.5.  Inside the room the find Jim's flashlight and come to the conclusion that it's probably his blood too.  One cool thing that happens is when they go inside the room, Natasha leaves her camera on the floor outside.  Something (I'm still thinking mutant) grabbed the camera, filmed them and got away without being seen.

It turns out the 6.5 was what they needed to abandon looking for Jim and head back to the surface.  You would think that would mean safety but instead what happens next is nuts.  They get near the exit and a security guard finds them.  He starts leading them out until an intersection is reached and something just takes him out.  It was big and moved so fast that it was just a blur.  8.0.  The remaining three members of the news team hide out in a room and things go heavy on the night vision which makes Natasha more attractive somehow.  The lake room is next on their path and through the night vision they spot the security guard a little ways in just wandering around because his eyes have been ripped out.  Metal.  I've seen enough horror movies to know that he is a trap and going to help him will get yourself killed.  Seconds after Pete says we need to go help him, they all shut up and a mutant comes out of the water to eat the back of the security guards head.  They're in the clear until Natasha lets out a whimper which begins a grand chase.  It's so grand that for the first time the movie adds creepy music to accompany it.  Creeped out meter down to a 7.5.  The mutant looks cool and all but before seeing it my imagination was left to wonder what it was which adds to the suspense.  There's only 25 minutes left though so the movie needs to start winding up I suppose.

AND THE FINAL CHASE IS ON

Natasha freaks out and loses it which only complicates the situation.  She's is making enough noise to turn any remaining normal humans into angry mutants.  The thing grabs Pete but Teeth shines the light on him which drives the beast away.  The chase continues in a most serious of ways until they hit a dead end.  Turns out it isn't such a dead end though and they find themselves in another room.  Teeth says "this isn't good".  That's probably the exact thing I would say if I walked into a room with four eyeballs on the ground.  Just like in The Grey (movie #52) they stumbled into the monsters den and it gets Pete.  Everyone split up and we're left alone with stumbling and crying Natasha.  The thing chases her down and her screaming wakes up a previously left unconscious Pete and Teeth.

So from Natasha's camera we see that she too has been knocked out and is now being dragged somewhere.  She gets dumped in the lake which wakes her up to the mutant talking in some mutant language.  There's a struggle but Pete and Teeth show up to get her out.  Stupidly Pete goes deeper into the water after the mutant while Natasha and Teeth cheese it out of there.  Pete wanders out to them all torn up and they make it out to a subway station.  Natasha then makes the call that we heard before the opening credits.  Pete dies before EMT's can make it.  After their escape, Natasha quit as a journalist and the police/government denied everything.  Instead of following up and pushing the story for answers out of the memory of the two dead crew members, it was all for nothing.  The End.

IN AUSTRALIA, AGAIN IS PRONOUNCE A-GAIN

FAVORITE SCENE : I'm a sucker for the first bloody room in horror movies.  The low-lit creepy room that they walked in and were in turn filmed in was my favorite

FAVORITE LINES : Aussie's say the f word A LOT.

RATING : 6.0  Movie had a good build up and I was very into it but like so many other horror movies (including Atrocious which I just did) there isn't an ending to match it.  If I spent lets say a whole year working on writing a movie, I wouldn't cut corners and have it made without a good ending unless someone offered me a bunch of money of course.  The character's were neither good no bad, they just ran around and screamed a lot.  This isn't a spoiler, you never do find out what's down there or how it came to be down there.  It's like I only watched 3/4 of a movie.  That being said, those were an exciting 3/4's.  I am glad I watched it (for free) but I really don't see myself watching it again.

ALTERNATE ENDING : Why do I have to think of one if the writers paid to do it don't?  Natasha cries and randomly shines a light at Teeth's face.  The light, which happens to be the monsters only weakness) is magnified of his teeth and kills the beast.  They are then eaten by one of the other 500 down there.

WHAT I WOULD DO IF I WAS THE MAIN CHARACTER :  The same thing that I say I would do in any of these found footage movies which is absolutely lose my mind only after trying to flirt with Natasha.  Then when running away I would pull this move (skip to 10:28) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ethAaI6isY

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SEQUEL:  The sequel is actually a combination of two movies because there is only one news team that has the stones to do a story on the mutants of New South Wales and that's the channel 4 news team out of San Diego.  Anchorman 2 : Tunnelman.

 Teeth's mouth is closed so you can't see his glorious chompers
 Teeth, Pete and Natasha up to no good.
 Lead girl in all of these movies is always wearing a white tank top.  Thanks to the guy who made that rule.
 A different view of Natasha
 What is under your cities Australia?  Do something about it and make your toilet water spin the same ways as the rest of us and the "water crisis" will be over!
That's probably just from someone who sneezed while having a nosebleed.

Bye Bye Australia
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1 comment:

  1. Saw this movie a few months ago. Giant disappointment. 4/10

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