Director: Howard J. Ford
Year: 2026
Country: USA/United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Looking for her missing mother, a woman and her friends head out to a remote cave system to figure out what happened to her, and despite being warned away by a professor in the area, descend into the cave system where they encounter the bloodthirsty alien creature that lives inside.
Review:
For the most part, this was a pretty solid and likable genre effort. Among the better elements present here is a rather intriguing main setup that offers a rather strong central starting point for the action to come. The central explanation to get everyone out to the cave system, where the group is being dragged along to look into the mysterious disappearance of the one girl’s mother, who went missing and needs to be looked into, serves as a great way to introduce the team to the area where the alien-like beings originate. It handles the lore well enough, focusing on the history of strange disappearances in the local caves which is given life through some great flashbacks to the creature living throughout history and the various individuals who have documented proof of it but are decidedly appropriate at getting an idea of the creatures inside the cave to where it makes them feel all the more intriguing once they get to the area.
With this setup in place, the resulting creature action is incredibly well-handled and at times outright chilling. The spooky cave setting for everything works incredibly well in this regard, not just because the isolation of the environment gives this a dark, claustrophobic setting, but the enhanced elements we know of due to the creature’s backstory help to make everything come together that much better. With the tentacled appearance, spiked lizard-like design, and ability to crawl over the surface of the caves, it all makes this feel immensely worthwhile as to how they’re able to get this type of action throughout here, where it’s based on getting the creature involved in the different encounters throughout the cave. These are generally fun, involving the creature appearing out of the darkness and dragging the victim into the darkness, or the victim gets viciously and brutally ripped apart, coming together to make for some likable elements within this one.
There are a few slight factors with this one that hold it down. The main issue here is the sluggish first half, where it spends far too much time on the introductory experience before they even get to the cave, so it takes a while before anything really happens. The idea of the in-depth nature detailing the history of disappearances around the cave, the potential background of sightings involving something living in the area, and then introducing the social media influencer into the group, who’s out in the area anyway, makes it feel immensely underwhelming waiting around for the creatures to start attacking. The first parts are fine if just played a bit too slow for something like this to get to know the plot at hand, but it’s the last one that holds it up since there’s just little reason for her to be there when she could’ve been involved from the beginning, contributes almost nothing important beyond a new body, and isn’t much of a factor anyway so it's curious why she’s there. As well, with the cheesy CGI being used to get the creatures on-screen, these all manage to bring this one down slightly.
Overview: ***.5/5
A solid if somewhat slightly problematic creature feature, there’s a lot to enjoy with this one, while only being let down by those drawbacks to the point where it’s a serviceable enough genre effort. Those who are fine with these factors, who enjoy this style of genre effort in general, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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