The jungle of Indonesia, the legend of Yamashita's gold, inbred mutants, killer zombie-samurais... Dead Mine has everything a movie should have, but somehow filmmaker Steven Sheil disappears in a generic fog of stuff we've literary seen a thousand times before. That's a pity, because Dead Mine could have been a great piece of silly genre cinema. Now it just turns out okay, but nothing more. But I always welcome Indonesia horror films - even if I think this one would have turned out better if they made it for the Indonesian market and not trying to conquer the world.
A British led expedition in the deepest jungles in Indonesia unravels not just the legendary gold of General Yamashita, but also a terrible secret. Our heroes, a charming but underwritten Les Loveday as the leading twat, always reliable Sam Hazeldine as a tough mercenary and Miki Mizuno as a researcher with her own agenda, thinks they're gonna strike gold, but instead finds themselves trapped in a deep Japanese-created mine, a former experimental facility deadling with a new type of super-soldiers!
Dead Mine, which also is a term for an abandoned mine, is basically a mix of The Descent and Outpost, with carefully selected plot twists take from both these British classics. I usually have no problem with this, but here there's a problem: they don't make anything fun of 'em. Dead Mine is just a very straight forward told story, nothing new, nothing extreme, nothing to little or much. It just exists. It doesn't help that the sets looks nice, the effects looks fine and quite gory - and jungle is never wrong - when there's not passion in the storytelling there's very little movie to enjoy. It would have been nicer to see this is as an even cheaper 100 % Indonesian horror movie á la Taring, made without any huge pretentions creating art.
But hey, I like ideas. It's a nice touch to build the story on the legend of Yamashita's gold, and mixing this with the Japanese Imperal guard as super-zombie-soldiers using their swords to hack their way through the cast is awesome. The mutants looks less good. No, they look okay, but... there's very little done with them. They crawl around like every other mountain mutant we've seen since Neil Marshall unleashed them on us some years ago, hissing, throwing human bones around 'em. There's some kind of back story, but the filmmakers almost seem uninterested in that and hurries to something else. The ending is a bit ambigious - so mayhe there's a sequel in the making, but I'm not sure I care about how the adventure continues.
I wish I could have liked this movie a lot more. I wish I could have written a long, raving review. But I can't. Instead I'm gonna continue to dream about something more fun, something more ambitious and enthusiastic. Maybe it will come some day. With or without mountain mutants and zombie-samurais.
Maybe with a little passion instead?
"But I always welcome Indonesia horror films - even if I think this one would have turned out better if they made it for the Indonesian market and not trying to conquer the world."
Yeah, you want something original with local flavors, myths, etc.....not something manufactured to the US market.
But maybe producers/Director had change of mind or something.....there could be lots of reasons why they made it that way.
"Dead Mine is just a very straight forward told story, nothing new, nothing extreme, nothing to little or much. It just exists. It doesn't help that the sets looks nice, the effects looks fine and quite gory - and jungle is never wrong - when there's not passion in the storytelling there's very little movie to enjoy."
That´s too bad I liked the trailer for this one....looked fun.
"But hey, I like ideas. It's a nice touch to build the story on the legend of Yamashita's gold, and mixing this with the Japanese Imperal guard as super-zombie-soldiers using their swords to hack their way through the cast is awesome."
Yeah.....it looks fun.
"I wish I could have liked this movie a lot more. I wish I could have written a long, raving review. But I can't. Instead I'm gonna continue to dream about something more fun, something more ambitious and enthusiastic. Maybe it will come some day. With or without mountain mutants and zombie-samurais.
Maybe with a little passion instead?"
Avoid World War Z(2013), very bland I thought.....good review and thanks, I might see it someday, I like the story.
Posted by: Megatron | July 23, 2013 at 15:11