"Underground" had potential to be great, but it never made it above less than mediocrity, sadly enough. Why? Well because of the lack of lighting. Now, I know that it was taking place in an underground bunker, but most of the scenes were so dark that it was hard to get a view of what was going on. Sure, it added to the realism of the lack of light far underneath the ground, but as a viewer of a movie, I would like to see what was going on. I didn't pay money to just sit around and look at poor-lit images all through an entire movie.
The story in "Underground" is the American government has been conducting secret experiments underground, gee - haven't we seen that before? And get this, of course there had to be some reference to notorious Dr. Mengele from World War II - just to add some diabolic twist to the storyline. Anyway, a bunch of young people are attending a rave at an abandoned military base - yep, you guessed it - the exact same military base where the government were conducting these inhuman experiments. After running afoul with gang-bangers, the people get trapped underground. But they aren't alone, they are being stalked by the genetically altered hybrids of man-beasts.
"Underground" had potential to be much more than it turned out to be. Don't get me wrong, the storyline - although cheesy and been seen numerous times before - wasn't all that bad. The storyline worked out well enough, and there was a great sense of claustrophobia and paranoia in the movie. But the complete lack of proper lighting really made the movie unbearable to sit through. Which was a shame.
As for the effects in the movie, well they were actually alright, and this subspecies of genetically altered humans were looking great. They did have that ferocious beastly quality to them. Just a shame they were mostly kept in the shadows or near-complete darkness most of the time.
"Underground" had a great ensemble of actors and actresses who did put on good performances. I think the only one I recognized in this movie was Jack Donner (playing Gunther). So it was nice to have a horror movie with a cast of fresh, new faces for a change.
Despite having potential, "Underground" never really kicked it off for me, because the lack of lighting really brought down the enjoyment of the movie. This style of keeping everything, and I do mean everything, in darkness is so early 1980's horror movie. It worked nicely back in the day, but today we want to see the dread and horror stalking us beneath the surface of the ground.
