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Codex Atanicus
Codex Atanicus is a three story anthology by Spanish director Carlos Atanes. Before watching the movie I never heard of the guy, but the introduction video on the DVD by one of his regular actresses Arantxa Peņa made me realize that I'm in for a hell of a ride. Experimental, bizarre, sick, strange - these are some of the words that describe the stories contained in Codex Atanicus. The anthology is opened by a 20 minute short from 1995 called Metaminds & Metabodies. I am really not into this kind of experimental videos, but I will try to summarize. It opens with a girl singing in the club. Everything looks ultra underground and the girl is connected with some wires to the walls. Strange people are watching her...
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Movie Review: Cave, The

Story
A new cave system has been found in Romania, and a group of cave-divers and scientists go there to explore the cave. But once inside, rocks fall down and blocks the exit. Lead by Jack, the group must go further into the cave in order to find another exit. Not only do they have to struggle to find another exit, but they must also battle the creatures that live inside the cave system, just waiting to tear them apart.

Comments
Been avoiding to watch this movie for quite some time, last night I thought I had to see what it was all about. I started watching it with no real expectations and ended up thinking that it was nothing special, but that it at least had some entertainment value. At times it kinda reminded me of Predator, only not nearly as good of course.

What was good about The Cave was that it was fast-paced and quite action-packed. Even if it's not a great movie or anything remotely close to being so, it still had stuff happening all the time so at least you didn't get bored watching it.

This man, Dr. Nicolai, finds this new cave system in Romania and asks a team of the worlds best cave-divers to be part of exploring the cave. They soon meet up and enter the cave and everyone seems excited as hell. They send one diver down who discover some creature that lives within the cave, but dismiss it as nothing dangerous. Then rocks fall down and block the exit and from then on it's about them trying to find a way out of the system. While going deeper into the cave, they soon run into these nasty creatures who live there, and they have to fight them off while trying to find another way out.

The movie looks quite stylish in the beginning and since most of the movie's running time is spent inside a cave, it's of course a bit dark. Although, you can still see everything that's going on, and it's never really too dark since the lights they use work very well. Having kind of recently seen The Descent, when watching the cave it has somewhat of the same feeling, but not nearly as creepy as in The Descent. Only thing they have in common is that the movies are both spent in caves, and that there are "monsters" in those caves as well.

The Cave The Cave

The Cave is not a scary movie at all, it's more of an adventure flick with some horror/thriller elements that does not work too well delivering proper suspense. The action is pretty good though, and just the reason that something's happening all the time like I mentioned before makes it kinda ok to watch. Although, at times it just feels way too Hollywood and that's never good. Biggest problem with The Cave is that whenever these monsters attack, you hardly don't get to see anything as the movie kinda cuts around all these scenes. That's a huge let-down since that was actually my main reason for watching it in the first place, for the monsters that is.

The actors are not very likable and you couldn't actually care less for any of them. Jack (Cole Hauser) looks very stiff and has no feeling, and his brother Tyler (Eddie Cibrian) from Sunset Beach is a crappy actor, probably just brought in for his looks. The other characters, as well as the first two, are totally uninteresting and doesn't make you wanna root for them. One good thing though is that there are not tons of CGI effects like one could've thought a movie like this would've had. That's always something but not nearly enough to make the movie turn out to be good or anything like that.

Final Comments
While it has a lot of action, some nice diving scenes and a pretty cool enviroment going for it, the actual suspense scenes are just garbage and the monsters look and act kinda ridiculous. It had some potential and they could've done so much more with the monsters and the little violence we get, but unfortunately that's not the case. I have to admit that it's somewhat entertaining at times, but couldn't be less memorable. If you're really bored and have nothing else to watch it might work but don't expect wonders.

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Cave, The

ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Bruce Hunt
WRITING CREDITS: Michael Steinberg, Tegan West
GENRE: Horror, Adventure, Sci-Fi
CAST: Cole Hauser, Eddie Cibrian, Morris Chestnut
COUNTRY: USA, Germany
RUNTIME: 97 min

RATING: 4/10

Cave, The Website/IMDB Click here
Cave, The Trailer Click here

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