Sommerleigh Pollonais, Horror Head Writer
Plot: A group of four amateur adventurers who specialise in exploring remote and forsaken places pay a visit to Shookum Hills, a town in the remote Appalachian Mountains which was abandoned decades ago due to a mysterious coal mine fire.
Review: The word is disappointed fellow horror aficionados. Very disappointed. Okay, that was two words, but you get my point. I saw the trailer for The Devil Below, and I’m also familiar with the story of the real life hole in Siberia, Russia where people claim to have recorded what sounds like voices screaming from Hell. This turned out to be an urban legend, but it’s still a compelling enough legend to make for a great horror movie. Instead what I got from The Devil Below was a lot of build up to nothing.
Here’s the good news—The design for the creatures was pretty cool (think of the subterranean monsters from The Descent but on steroids). That said, they weren’t easy to see clearly, so you really had to pay attention.
Everyman actor Will Patton (Armageddon/ Halloween 2018) plays a mine owner who abandons the mine and fences it off after losing his son. He and the other actors here do solid jobs with their parts, but the problem is there’s not much to work with. Now if the pacing was tighter and the suspense was…more suspenseful, this could’ve made up for the lack of character development. Instead we get ineffective scares, terribly lit scenes (I could barely see anything in the cave scenes) and plot holes as big as the actual hole these guys were investigating! I kept wondering why they wouldn’t just blow up the damn mine and lock things back up forever. Problem solved!
There’s not much left to say here so I’ll just do you a solid and recommend that you watch The Descent instead. Or, if you want a good horror movie with the word “below” in it (because you’re weird like that), check out As Above So Below instead. It’s smart, scary and loads better than The Devil Below.
Sommer’s Score: 4.5 out of 10
For my review of Tremors: Shrieker Island you can click here. Or for my review of action horror Shadow of the Cloud you can click here.
Sommerleigh of the House Pollonais. First of Her Name. Sushi Lover, Queen of Horror Movies, Comic Books and Binge Watching Netflix. Mother of two beautiful black cats named Vader and Kylo. I think eating Popcorn at the movies should be mandatory, PS4 makes the best games ever and I’ll be talking about movies until the zombie apocalypse comes.
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