La cueva (2014) User Reviews

Very realistic

[chrismackey1972 · 7/10 · 28 September 2014]

A group of five friends are on vacation and they explore a cave. However, they become lost inside, and they must do whatever it takes to survive. This movie shows the grittiness and realism of what can happen if you go into an unexplored and unused cave system. I guess this is like a realistic version of The Decent, but instead of showing trained spelunkers and cave-dwelling monsters, it shows how sadistic people can be when their need to survive outweighs all else. This is filmed mostly through a camcorder.

This movie is entirely in Spanish. I do not speak Spanish very well - I picked up a word here and there - but it was easy enough to follow what was going on. I'm hoping they'll release a dubbed version or at least a version with subtitles. Still, you can catch what's happening without that, though I'm not quite certain how the people became lost; perhaps that was mentioned in the dialogue. There are a few jumps in this, which is usually rare for these types of movies, so that was a welcome surprise.

I gave this a 7-star rating because the acting was very good, especially Marta Castellote. The sets were also cool. The filming, as I said earlier, was done via camcorder, so take that how you want. There is a lot of nudity in the beginning; they have full-frontal of a woman and a man. The storyline wasn't very original, but the movie was executed in a very realistic way. There are NO special effects of any kind. Really, the film didn't need them. If you're looking for a creature feature with special effects and such, watch The Decent. If you're looking for realism, watch this. I recommend it.

REC + Blair witch + Alive = La cueva

[santiagocosme · 6/10 · 13 December 2014]

If you take REC and mix it up with Blair Witch Project and Alive, you get something like La Cueva.

A group of friends venture into a cave on their holidays and just cannot come out of it. Everything is seen from the POV of a camera that one of them is holding (Like REC or Blair Witch). Things get worse by the minute as they suffer from dehydration, their batteries run out, and their general despair increases.

I am unlikely to end up trapped like these guys, as I wouldn't even walk into a dark elevator, but I do believe there's a certain amount of realism in this movie. A few people would have no hesitation in walking into a cave to impress some girls and could end up in a similar situation.

I thought the movie was entertaining for the most part, and it keeps you wondering if they are going to make it out of the cave alive. It even manages to be gripping at some stages.

So if you are into movies such as Blair Witch Project or REC, but didn't love the zombies or ghost aspect, you should enjoy La Cueva quite a lot.

Realistic,Intense

[demeloteixeira · 7/10 · 28 January 2018]

I think in general terms this was a great flick, a very realistic story that begin in a high spirit note straigth to desperation and pure madness, Great acting, I strongly recomend.

Common sense would help!

[rinzivillodamiano · 7/10 · 28 September 2014]

Why Don't They Just Rewind Their Camcorder to find the way back Out of the cave!!?? I'm meant to write 10 lines but it's impossible. I speak some Spanish but this movie is more visual. As soon as i saw Filmax i knew it was going to be as good as Rec. The Spanish have never let me down with original horror regardless of what form it takes. But believe me once you have seen this you will know what i meant by my first sentence! High quality camera-work and excellent ,sometimes too excellent, acting by the protagonists. But it makes you want to climb into the screen and get them out yourself. You will see what i mean!But we have a lot to learn and a long way to go before we can take everyday situations and make them as horrifying as the Spanish are now so frequently doing, and doing damn well!

De(s)cent

[kosmasp · 6/10 · 26 January 2015]

It's again found footage and it's again poor decision making time. But if you can overlook those things, you might be able to "enjoy" a claustrophobic cave movie. "In Darkness we fall" as the English title goes a bit further than the original title. Still it's not much of a spoiler considering the nature of the movie.

You cannot really judge the "acting" in this, but you do have your usual bunch of friends exploring and having fun, until everything goes downhill (no pun intended). The camera is pretty good and might be able to make you nervous for all the right reasons. If the movie would've been able to make a better case/story of the people getting places, this might actually really be good. It's decent horror, nothing more, nothing less

Waste

[marianaobaharuka · 1/10 · 25 January 2019]

A silly, unrealistic film about idiotic young people doing what they knew they should not do just to impress one another and that predictably goes wrong. A redeeming factor is that it was (at least in part, I guess) really filmed in a cave, and a cave surrounded by a very, very beautiful natural forested/beach location. An aggravating factor is that the plot offers an interesting ethical dilemma which is so badly handled it loses all effectiveness. The audience (should I say victims?) must chose if one thing neutralizes the other or just highlights it; notwithstanding I'd not recommend it.

Claustrophobic and depressing low-budgeted film packed with tension , shocks , thrills , and chills

[ma-cortes · 5/10 · 9 May 2017]

Horror story filled with suspense , relentless terror , nudism , profanity , bad language and lots of gore and blood . This frightening Spanish movie concerns about a young group , being trapped into claustrophobic caves . As a group of 5 friends formed by Marta Castellote as Celia , Xoel Fernández as Carlos , Eva García-Vacas as Begoña , Marcos Ortiz as Jaco and Jorge Páez as Iván gather together on holiday to Island Formentera , in the Balearic Islands . Later on , the group goes for a caving hick . Shortly after , they encounter a cave entrance , which they decide to explore . After some exploring deep underground , the expedition gets horribly worse when they become lost , rockfall collapse and they don't find the dark way out . After delivering further into the cavern , things go awry .

This is one of the cheapest horror movies of the last years and it contains thrills , chills , cannibalism , blood and gore . Regular film features an unknown cast , being shot on location in Formentera, Balearic Islands, Spain . It packs a sinister , realistic and horrifying atmosphere , full of eerie scenes by means of shaky camera as well as the former Spanish film titled ¨REC¨ and followings ; as ¨La Cueva¨ itself is realized in similar premise to the Spanish originals . ¨Alfredo Montero's La Cueva¨ was shot with camera over shoulders , in documentary style and itself takes place from point of sight from cameraman . It was shot in ¨Rec¨ style that was followed by Rec II and Rec III , Genesis , all of them written/produced/directed by Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero , two magnificent experts on terror genre . And it had an American remake : ¨Quarantine¨ , a solid film , being continued by ¨Quarantine 2¨ . ¨La Cueva¨ or ¨The cave¨ it is an acceptable movie but mediocre , a so-so terror story plenty of suspense , merciless horror , plenty of screams , shocks and tension and in thrilling style . The film takes parts here and there from other films as ¨The Descent¨(2005) , ¨The Cave¨(2005) and , of course , ¨Rec¨ saga . The horror moments are compactly made and fast-moving in which the brutal instincts of survival of the human beings are well shown , by being seen from the POv of a camera that one of the boys is holding . Well worth seeing if you like videos and shaky cameras , such us : ¨Blair witch project¨, ¨28 Days/Weeks¨ and ¨Cloverfield¨ .

Others films dealing with this sub-genre about people caught in caves are the followings : ¨Sub-human¨ (1972) by Gary Sherman with Donald Pleasence , Norman Rossington , David Ladd ; ¨What wait below¨ (1985) by Don Sharp with Robert Powell , Timothy Bottoms , Lisa Blount , Anne Heywood , Richard Johnson . And recently : ¨The cave¨ by Brian Hunt with Cole Houser , Piper Perabo , Eddie Cibrian , Rick Ravanello ; ¨The descent¨(2005) by Neil Marshall with Alex Reid , Natalie Mendoza , Shauna MacDonald , both them dealing with people caught into caverns and besieged , chased , attacked by packs of carnivorous , bloodthirsty , crawling creatures are waiting for them .

Sick

[harryplinkett14 · 1/10 · 15 January 2017]

This film is outright sick. There is no story here, the characters are irritating and wafer thin, and I guess the film exists only as a kind of virtual ride through the caves for the same kind of adolescent idiot the film depicts. That's it. Also, it's an excuse for a sick director to throw in a nasty, sickening, and utterly unrealistic scene towards the end.

I enjoy being scared, but I don't enjoy being abused. There is a difference. But whoever made this thing clearly can't tell the two apart. I do not recommend this to anyone. It's a waste of time and an insult to the viewer.

Quite interesting.

[svartamoln · 8/10 · 2 January 2015]

At first when you start watching this movie you have the feeling it'll be something like REC or The Descent, but as soon as the movie goes on you realize it will be differently. What would you do if you get lost inside a cave and spend days trapped in there? Well, you're so desperate to find a way out that you go crazy, you can't think straight and you are so thirsty you decide to drink seawater and so starved you decide to kill your friend in order to drink their blood and eat their flesh. This is what La Cueva has to offer, 80 minutes of extreme situations that will allow you to feel the despair of getting lost, the uncertainty of not knowing if the protagonists are gonna make it and the horror of seeing what people are willing to do so as to survive, they all want to live whatever it takes.

I totally recommend this movie because it has a very realistic storyline and such a great acting, this is one of those movie you can't miss.

The Future of Democratic Liberation As Seen Through the Anus

[KlaudiaKatastrofale · 12 November 2014]

Except for pornography, there are not many mainstream (in various degrees) movies that expose a man's anus directly on the camera, but should you start counting them this intense Spanish horror movie would serve as a willing starter. And not only does it expose a man's anus, it also dives deep into it.

The premise of the movie in speleological terms is quite simple: a group of people - they're not exactly what you'd call young adults, nor are they really friends - goes vacating on some desolate coast where they find an entrance to a cave, go into it to explore it, get lost, and troubles emerge. Although speleologists will object that without a helmet in a cave system through which you need to crawl there's practically nil chance that your head will remain in one piece, but generally they will agree that while if getting lost in complete darkness your doom is sealed, with several handy, sturdy flashlights and even night-vision device your chances are much better.

The silence of the speleologists begins, however, when we see a cave not as a cave but as an anus. More precisely, the entrance to the cave as the anus, and the cave system as a whole as the human intestines. This way the logic of the story gains better consistency, and succeeds in sublimating the message of the movie far more thoroughly than if resorting to anything supernatural. In fact, the movie could not be closer to "natural" than it is! It is an act of digestion and excretion, lending the "found video" genre a tight dramaturgic structure : as the process of digestion suggests, what goes in, comes out, which is the optimistic view of the adventure (some might come out again), but before it comes out, it must be eaten and dissolved - the dark horror inside the human intestines.

But it is crucial once again to stress the importance of the exposed anus of one of the male characters. It is no coincidence that this anus belongs to the one who will be, firstly, responsible for leading others deep into the cave (intestinal) system, secondly, devouring them, and thirdly, getting stuck himself. For here we are not dealing simply with any intestinal system, but with a system that is human malice.

Human malice is - in intestinal terms - digestion gone wrong. It is a cry for freedom (excretion) getting stuck, more specifically, getting stuck in its own devouring mechanism which then produces more excreta and further worsens the condition of constipation. It is a self-defecating program, as it were, that eventually kills its host, in a way literally drowning it in its own excreta: just as the character to whom the anus belongs is the most eager to liberate others from the cave by way of democratic legitimacy (here we can think of the USA liberating other countries under the aegis of democratic consent), so is he also the one who pushes the idea of liberation over the top. He crosses the fine line and turns the noble deed into malice, a constipation just contrary to the excretion (liberation) as the final goal, a retention of excreta that drowns its subject.

The importance of the anus belonging to a male rather than a female - after all, inside the cave the hand-held camera catches female behinds many times thus suggesting that the cave-intestinal system might be gender unbiased - lies in the fact that the intestinal system and human malice merge in one specific point, and that is male misogyny. The cave- intestinal system as a speleological-biological environment may be neutral per se, but when infused with male misogyny and chauvinism it becomes a signifier of human malice that is as deeply rooted and dark as intestines/cave themselves. And this provides yet another sharp edge to the message of the movie: if liberating others by the force of democracy may ostensibly be seen as the prerogative of the "enlightened" West (here you might notice the role of flashlights inside the cave), with this misogynous element the liberal-democratic stance comes to transcend this limitation and becomes a far more universal force that can fit any political (and economic, corporate etc.) entity anywhere precisely because of the darkness (and deep rootedness) of misogyny as its constitutive part. In other words, if you find yourself stuck deep inside misogynist intestines (a.k.a. ideology, corporation, profit etc.), beware if you get offered help by the same misogynist in whose intestines you got stuck.

An unclear balance between a realistic setup and annoying characters! [+49%]

[arungeorge13 · 5/10 · 20 November 2023]

While the film balances out a decent dose of realism with ultimate savagery and claustrophobic jumpscares, the director is unable to fully commit to the found-footage format, taking away some of its shine. This is essentially The Descent, minus the flesh-hungry creatures, albeit with a more spontaneous (yet dumb) premise and an emotionally weaker set of key characters. A couple of them, in particular, are incredibly annoying and stupid. But I guess that's how groups in general tend to be.

Cave horror is a reasonably engaging subgenre when tackled correctly, and in that regard, director Alfredo Montero is easily able to bring those anxiety levels up, especially when the characters keep crawling their way through tiny spaces. There are a whole bunch of "getting lost" clichés, but the proceedings kept me interested. Since the whole saga unravels quickly, I wasn't able to fully buy into the group's decision to commit cannibalism to stay alive. In a longer and more emotionally drawn-out film, that plot development would've been the most disturbing. But here, the jumpscares and shaky visuals continue overriding it until the very end.

The average "elder teen" can survive 5 months without water, studies show.

[fedor8 · 6 August 2020]

Title: The Cave. Genre: Found footage.

Guess what that means. Can you guess? It's not difficult.

People die in a cave.

I mean, how predictable can you get? At least call the movie something else, like "Millennial Idiots" or something, because we already know that EVERY found-in-sewage film deals with teens or "elder teens" (the latter in this case), and we know that found-sewage means that everyone croaks, so at least surprise us with the cave, frcrssakes. It's bad enough we know everyone croaks (or do they?), why must we know where as well? The whole purpose of horror and action films is to surprise you occasionally. I don't think these found-footage film-makers even understand the basics of cinema or story-telling. "OK, we'll tell them everything in advance and all that's left is HOW quickly they croak and who kills who. That should be enough?" No, it effing ain't.

You know how those teen found-footage films make you happy to see them all killed? Well, this film makes you loathe the cast in record time. In literally less than one minute within being introduced to these nitwits you're having fantasies of seeing them impaled, decapitated and disemboweled. I doubt I've ever been made to hate teens this quick. Well... "teens". 20somethings. Elderly teens. Same thing.

If you think American teen-horrors are annoying, just wait till you see these basturds. They're like a bunch of horny 5 year-olds. I know that makes no sense but fact IS that they're horny - and act like 5 year-olds. Their behaviour is so over-the-top infantile that it's tempting to stop watching the "La cueva". But then... it's found garbage so you know they all get killed.

Just watch those ridiculous scenes at the airport. I haven't even seen 5 year-olds behave that way in public places, least of all airports. Movie, you're trying too hard to make us hate them, to tell us they're idiots. You don't have to try so hard - it's written on their faces. They are millennial Americans!

If only these found-garbage teen-horror films were actual documentaries that show ACTUAL demise of real millennials: that would mean an actual significant reduction of that useless species. That'd be awesome! That's the film's biggest flaw, the fact that it's all just made up. If only these millennial-entrapping caves existed on every beach, the world would be a better place.

Spanish movie humour always struck me as fairly awful and childish, not too dissimilar from French humour, and we're bombarded with meaningless and jokey aren't-they-happy-and-annoying-before-the-cave-kills-them scenes early on. That's a big minus, I don't forgive that stuff. In one early scene a "teen" shows his behind, and I mean anus, full-screen, as in a pornographic film. Not kidding. And it's a guy, not a lady.

And that's why we hate Spanish cinema.

The film gets points off for the dumb premise too. Who goes into a deep and claustrophobic maze of a cave - without either supplies or a guide? These five are so dirt-dumb they should have guardians, yet somehow they know about things like "air-flow" in caves! Totally absurd bunch.

Besides, with the amount of time and energy they spend in the cave - crawling on all fours - they should have all dehydrated within hours, one day tops. Who goes into a cave mid-Summer without at least one bottle of water? People nowadays carry around water bottles everywhere they go in warm weather. These morons survive at least 4 days without water, which is asinine in the best of circumstances. Not to mention the guy who drinks salt water; he should have gone bat-sheet-crazy and dehydrated within hours. But he lasts 4 days too. Really dumb.

Very predictably, Celia - the only one who hasn't drunk anything in at least 4 days (well, not counting her friend Bego whose blood was cannibalized by the guys) - finds the exit WHILE WOUNDED and on the run from the other three guys. It's as stupid as it is pointless. Nor is it clear how they manage to miss her when she's using the camera's light to find her way through. In a pitch-black cave none of the three notice the light on her camera? Did an amoeba write this?

She's the only survivor. Somehow, extremely dehydrated, panic-stricken and with a serious knife wound, she manages to find an exit. Does she survive though? We don't find out. The movie's like "screw the viewers, we won't tell them. Ha! The joke's on you, dumb viewers, for watching this trash!"

So basically the key to finding the exit in this cave was the group trying to kill each other?

It's a dumb movie. The descent into insanity and savagery is well played, but that's the only good aspect of this stinker.

For Cave Explorers

[karthickvgbp · 8/10 · 25 July 2020]

This movie seems to be very nice for me cause it's a horror movie without ghost or anything if you like to watch cave videos this movie makes you feel better. Language is not a barrier for this movie just enjoy & explore some cave. Rip : John Jones

From fun to insane

[anikb-87099 · 8/10 · 4 April 2022]

Shot in a 90% Found Footage style, this film goes from being a fun mood trip of 5 friends to becoming absolutely insane and terrifying towards the end. The story is plain simple but execution is top class.

Showcases terrifying human traits

[Biswas_ · 9/10 · 4 April 2022]

A simple tale of a group of youths getting lost in a dark dingy cave has a lot more to offer than you expected.

First of all, there are no ghosts. But what has been shown to be as monsters are humans themselves. It is debatable. How do you survive with no food and water nearby? Do you just keep searching searching searching until you pass out or is there an even more devilish way out? This film showcases exactly that.

I am from India and first things first, I find it absolutely hilarious or actually weird to see men and women happily show there naked but*h*les on the camera (one of them actually, on a serious note, goes on to show his naked but*h*le in the camera). Seems, Spanish censor board allows such things. In India, censor board members would have simply passed out not by seeing the main part of the film, but by seeing those naked as*es and bu*th*les .

Next thing is the main part, the cave. It's shot really well. I truly felt tensed and scared as the lost group tried figuring their way out and things get absolutely terrifying towards the climax but its ending is kinda cold and not well made.

Great entertainment for a night.