| The Cave | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Bruce Hunt |
| Produced by | Richard S. Wright Andrew Mason Tom Rosenberg Gary Lucchesi |
| Written by | Michael Steinberg Tegan West |
| Starring | Cole Hauser Morris Chestnut Eddie Cibrian Rick Ravanello Daniel Dae Kim with Lena Headey and Piper Perabo |
| Music by | Reinhold Heil Johnny Klimek |
| Cinematography | Ross Emery |
| Editing by | Brian Berden |
| Studio | Lakeshore Entertainment |
| Distributed by | Screen Gems |
| Release date(s) | August 26, 2005 |
| Running time | 97 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $30 million |
| Box office | $33,296,457 |
The Cave is a 2005 horror film, directed by Bruce Hunt. It stars Cole Hauser, Eddie Cibrian, Morris Chestnut, Marcel Iureş, Lena Headey, Rick Ravanello, Piper Perabo and Daniel Dae Kim.
Contents |
The film begins deep in the Carpathian mountains of Romania during the Cold War, where a group of Russian and British explorers are searching for a long lost 13th century abbey. As they venture inside and below the church, they make a startling discovery: the abbey is built over the entrance to a vast subterranean cave system. When they try to blast their way in, they cause a landslide that buries the abbey and the men are trapped in the cave below it. Once they recover, they continue on into the cave without a choice in hopes of finding a way out, but as they do, they hear strange pinging sounds coming from the darkness. They are never seen again.
30 years later, a team of archeologists are conducting an excavation of the ruins of the same abbey and discover the cave system. These scientists are Dr. Nicolai and his associate Katheryn Jannings. Local biologists believe the cave could contain an undiscovered ecosystem, so they hire a group of American spelunkers led by Jack McAllister and his brother Tyler to help them investigate its unknown depths. Jack and Tyler are thrill-seeking professional cave explorers who run a world famous team of divers. They arrive in Romania with the latest equipment, including a modified rebreather system allowing a diver to remain submerged for up to 24 hours. The diving team includes rock-climbing professional Charlie, first scout Briggs, sonar expert Strode, survival expert Top Buchanan, and cameraman Alex Kim.
As they begin the expedition, they send Briggs to find the first advance base camp, much to Tyler's displeasure as he is the best scout, but Jack thinks otherwise due to Tyler's reckless behavior. When they lose contact with Briggs, they all dive in to find him. When Strode wanders off, he is suddenly attacked by an large, unknown creature. When he is dragged away, his water scooter explodes and causes a cave-in. Unable to save him or their only known means of getting out of the cave, Jack resolves with the team that they must find another way out.
As Jack and Top scout for a new route, Katheryn and Nicolai begin examining the bizarre biology in this cave, which they discover a strange parasite in all of the lifeforms they find. All known cave creatures today are variations of outer-world creatures that have simply adapted for cave life over generations, but Katheryn believes this new parasite to be life that originated in the cave environment and has never been exposed to the outside world.
When Jack gets stuck in a shaft, he is suddenly attacked by the same kind of creature that killed Strode, but Jack manages to break free from its claws; still, he is slightly injured.
As the team heads deeper into the cave, they occasionally stumble across scattered equipment and remains of the previous explorers, and are unaware they are being stalked by the creatures. The team begins to question Jack's leadership as he leads them into unknown passages without second thought, and becomes more unstable since he was attacked, but Tyler assures the team to trust him. Jack also begins to exhibit a transformation of his senses, and physical features.
When he leads them to rapids that flow to an underground lake, the creatures attack again, Katheryn is unharmed but Dr. Nicolai is dragged away. As Jack tries in vain to free him, he sees the creatures are demon-like humanoids, and notices a recognizable tattoo on one of them. The team then reaches a vast delta in the underground river with large walls.
As the team and Jack argue about where to go next, Charlie climbs the wall to an opening for a possible exit. But when she reaches the opening, she is jumped by one of the creatures. She manages to kill it with improvised weapons but she is gutted by the creature as it struggles with her and dies. When Jack tries to save her, he has another transformation that slows him down.
As the team mourn Charlie's death, they see Jack's transformations are beginning to show with his super-keen senses and inhumanly slanted pupils, reminencing the demons'. Katheryn then concludes that his transformations are from the parasite they discovered, for it has entered his body through his wounds from his attack and is affecting his nervous system.
Remembering the remains of the previous explorers and the tattooed creature, they realize that the creatures are the previous explorers. They were transformed as the result of the symbiotic parasite that infects a host and begins to mutate it. In the case of humans, they are transformed into the mutant-humanoid demons, built for surviving in a cave environment. They have wings, amphibian skin, echolocation hearing (which are the strange sounds of them navigating in the dark), razor sharp teeth, and long claws. They are no longer human and they now only hunt down and slaughter anything that enters their new home. They realize Jack is quickly mutating into one of them, the team splits up, their trust in him shattered, but Tyler and Top stay with him.
Jack leads Tyler and Top through the opening Charlie climbed to that leads them down an underground ice slope, Top falls and breaks his leg but they manage to find a way through the ice. They discover a hellish cavern littered with skeletons and realize that this is an ancient battleground between the creatures and the Knights Templar which the knights clearly lost. The surviving knights built the church at the entrance in order to seal the cave and prevent future generations from entering and keeping the demons from getting out into the world.
When Jack finds the cave's exit in an underwater passage, he has another transformation, at this point he is now barely human and too weak to find the rest of the team. As Tyler heads back to find the others, the creatures enter the cavern and steal the diving equipment necessary to get through the exit.
Tyler finds Briggs hanging from the ceiling of a section of the cavern, impaled on stalactites and barely alive, Briggs points his pupils in the direction the creature went. Katheryn manages to save Tyler from being attacked when she uses their sonar gun to distort the creatures hearing. Tyler and Katheryn swim to the ice cave, she nearly drowns but Tyler does CPR to save her. They regroup with Alex and make it back to the exit. Jack tries to steal back their rebreather while the rest of the group fight off the creatures, but Alex is killed and eaten.
When they are surrounded, Jack causes an explosion with the rebreather and causes the cave to collapse; he stays behind to fight the creatures off and is presumably killed by the cave-in.
Tyler, Kathryn, and Top escape the cave and make it back to the surface. They return to civilization and part ways. Later Tyler asks Katheryn if Jack could have survived out in the open. She's silent, then says that before she'd thought that the parasite could only survive underground, but now she's uncertain and thinks that that maybe the parasite wants to get out.
When she kisses him, she moves her sunglasses down below her eyes, revealing pupils similar to Jack's when he first showed signs of infection. Tyler suddenly realizes that Katheryn is infected with the parasite, and supposedly intends to infect the rest of the world. He runs after her into a crowd of people, but she has disappeared.
The Cave received universally negative reviews, with a current rating of 13% on Rotten Tomatoes. The main complaint was the lack of character building and endless cliches, with one critic saying 'a generic duffer that is as exciting as a hole in the ground'.
In the US, the film opened ranked #5 grossing a poor $6,147,294 at 2,195 sites, averaging $2,800.[1] It went on to have a final US gross of $15,007,991.[2] In Australia, it opened at 89 sites, averaging AUD$3,204 grossing AUD$285,121.[3] It had a massive 2nd weekend decrease by 74%, and had a finishing gross of AUD$570,131.[4] Worldwide, the film has grossed $33,296,457.[5]
The Cave, The Descent, both released theatrically in 2005, and The Cavern, released on DVD in 2006, are three films with similar themes. All three films involve spelunking and terrifying subterranean life that hunts down the principal characters. The Descent was held as the most successful of the three according to ticket sales and critical reviews; however, The Cave was the only one of the three that was actually filmed inside a cave.
The soundtrack was released on August 26, 2005 by Lakeshore Records, which features metal bands by Atreyu, Lacuna Coil, Diecast, Burning Brides, Ill Niño, Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, It Dies Today, Trivium and more. Also, the single Nemo by Nightwish is featured during the end credits of the film.