Release Date: August 15th, 2013 (Limited and VOD)
Director: Jeff Chamberlain
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Film Pulse Score: 1.5/10
Very few good scary movies have been made with a PG-13 rating. Now, that does not doom it to be non-scary or lacking in creepy goings-on – just see 1963’s The Haunting, 1961’s The Innocents, or 2001’s The Others. But each of those films had stellar casts, powerful directors, strong scripts, remarkable cinematography, and excellent scores. Abandoned Mine wants in all of these categories and more. While I strongly suggest seeing the three examples I mention above (if you have not already seen them), I must beg you to bypass Chamberlin’s film.
Nearly the entire cast is comprised of five actors – Brad (Reiley McClendon), his new girlfriend Sharon (Alexa Vega), Brad’s former girlfriend and Sharon’s best friend Laurie (Saige Thompson), Brad’s best friend Jim (Charan Prabhakar), and Laurie’s Indian friend Ethan who serves as comic relief (Charan Prabhakar). They are all young adults who seem to have all recently graduated from high school. When Laurie – who has moved away from the small town for college – returns, she finds herself invited to join Brad and others for a Halloween excursion. Halloween appears to be this group’s holiday of choice. Brad rigs helmets with lights and cameras to capture their potentially scary visit to an allegedly haunted mine.
The mine dates back into the 1800s and carries a terrifying story. A Mr. Jarvis who worked in the mine upset the mine’s owners and so the latter, after conscripting some help from fellow miners, lures Jarvis and his two young daughters into the mine where they are intentionally buried alive. The story goes that Jarvis haunts the mine and will continue to do so until his two girls’ spirits find female human hosts to catch a ride in, to get themselves out of the mine.
The group follows Brad with varying degrees of trepidation as they go into the mine. Now, the film could have really used the mine as a third character the way that the phenomenally visceral film The Descent (2005) used a cave system as a claustrophobic character of its own. However, Chamberlin drops this particular ball, and the mine becomes a backdrop not fully utilized. As the group moves through the mine, they find themselves somehow trapped without a way back out the way they came and instead are forced to go deeper into the mine looking for another way out. They are also separated for various reasons, something that is commonplace in “horror” movies and is therefore predictably boring as a plot device.
Bad things begin to happen to each person as they are separated, but we quickly learn that it may not be supernatural forces which are causing the problems for the group. More on the subject I cannot say, for the two of you who are brave enough to watch this abysmal film. Even for films I cannot respect, I will still refrain from providing spoiler-laden reviews. I will say that the ending is absolutely absurd and has no real connection to anything that has come before.
The actors are not horrible, and there is some attempt at character development, but the script and direction and just so bad that any potential the cast may have had on their own is ruined. The ludicrous nature of the film’s plot and climax destroys any chance that the abandoned-mine setting could actually be scary or horrific. Perhaps if this had been better written, produced, directed, and acted, and been filmed with an “R” rating, it could have turned into something worth seeing – a least on a rainy, rainy day. As it is, it is an utterly absurd and wholly non-recommendable.
