Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Kaydan Christian
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
paulclaassen
This felt like a 'The Descent' wannabe, only very theatrical and not very believable. Sam Hazeldine was by far the best actor, as I found the rest very mediocre, as if they didn't really believe in the film themselves. The make-up effects are so clearly B-movie, but this was low budget after all, so I'll just convince myself they did the best with what they had. The plot and execution thereof, though, was not credible. And what an absolutely stupid ending! The abrupt ending WILL make you feel you've wasted your time watching this.
Claudio Carvalho
In an isolated island in Indonesia, an expedition is apparently seeking the legendary Yamashita's Gold. Out of the blue, they are attacked and seek refugee in an abandoned Japanese bunker. Soon they discover that the place was a secret laboratory in the World War II where the prisoners were guinea pig in weird experiments. Further, they are trapped inside with strong and resistant creatures created by these experiments. Will they succeed to escape from the dead mine?I really do not understand how producers (HBO, not Sci-Fi) can spend their money in garbage like that. The story is a terrible rip-off of "The Descent" and I believe anyone who read it would have at least some doubts to make a movie. The dialogs are extremely poor and the motive of the expedition is a mess. Who are the guys that shoot the expedition? How the Japanese survivor had eaten and drunken along all those years trapped in the bunker with the creatures? How someone could inject a rusted syringe with a sixty and something year-old substance in another person with the intention of healing him? The group splitting to be more easily killed is one annoying clichés. The awful lack of conclusion seems to show the intention of a sequel, meaning more wasted money. Last but not the least; the acting is more dreadful than the creatures. My vole is two.Title (Brazil): "Mina Abandonada" ("Abandoned Mine")
Rabbit-Reviews
By now we are used to seeing all sorts of horrors coming to us from Asia, but they all had one thing in common, they were seriously messed up, with rare exceptions. Dead Mine, an Indonesian medium budget movie takes an almost textbook approach to storytelling, and while graphic violence is present, it isn't sick or anything, but just as I said more classically bloody that we are used to seeing in American horrors. The movie itself is nothing special, but the exotic locations,cast and story make up for that. The director Steven Sheil managed to make the movie look really good, with some innovative camera angles and relatively suspenseful scenes, sacrificing reality for looks. Although when the movie's about zombies, Second World War and strange things lurking in the depths of the mine, reality discussion is really not a valid one.An expedition led by a very wealthy, I guess scientist, called Price has finally found the thing they were looking for in Indonesia, an old abandoned bunker from WW 2. Price, accompanied by his girlfriend, a Japanese journalist on a quest to find out more about the war and a bunch of mercenaries in charge of their safety, decides to take a closer look. As soon as he said it, they were attacked by a local gang and forced to find shelter in the mine that has been converted into a bunker. After the cave in, they find themselves trapped in the mine with only one option, to push forward, into the darkness. What they don't know is that the mine is not abandoned, but far from it...Fascination by Nazi zombies is something that has kept filmmakers in Europe occupied for quite some time, but now we are seeing this trend in Asia with Japans soldiers. While the directing was good and they managed to make Dead Mine look visually great, the story and the dialogue needs to be better. The thing that I missed the most is the suspense building up as they go deeper and deeper into the mine... Check out Dead Snow, a movie with a similar subject if you liked Dead Mine. It's not the best movie out there, but it's worth a watch...Movie recommendations www.Rabbit-Reviews.com - Only movies worth watching
seularts
I have to say that this movie did surprise me in the end. Sure, it is below average when it comes to acting and character development, but I've seen way more worse.Two things I appreciated about this movie: one is the fact that they used Japanese language, and not some flimsy hybrid English stray hobo slang thing with the Japanese actors; two, the attention to details and a very well organized set and environment.Thou the characters in the movie were very poor developed and the lines were just dull, the action did compensate for that loss. As I said, the ending did surprise me, a lot in fact, because it wasn't predictable and it kind of showed that the main characters weren't indestructible and did face a dangerous situation and certain death.The plot is there, not very well explained but it does give a proportion of reality to the events, but, in the same time, it may be also stretched a bit. Let's be serious, those soldiers didn't move for 70 years and when a stupid guy enters a freaking sand circle they all weak up ready for action!? I give it a 7/10 just because it has potential and it did kept me watching all the scenes without making me want to skip faster to the ending. I hope this movie director/writer is just starting his career and will learn to get better actors, for his future projects, because his ideas for horror genre could make him the next best thing.
