When I was younger I had an interest in urban exploring. Not anything extreme - and not to tight spaces either, I suffer from a splash of claustrophobia. UE is quite far from being just another game, I see it as a way to look into yourself by visiting places people haven’t been in for many years. It’s just something that needs to be done, to make yourself stronger and somehow make you analyze yourself. The problem is that I hate to get dirty, so my career in this particular hobby didn’t go that far, but I’ve seen some places you haven’t seen - I can guarantee that. Instead of doing it for real I really dig movies set in that kind of environment: Underground, Urban Explorers, Catacombs, As Above, So Below and countless of ghost-hunters-visit-a-haunted-asylum-movies. Not all of them good of course, Catacombs is terrible and Urban Explorer could have been so much better. Then we have The Tunnel.
I heard about it some years back and my pal Jocke mentioned it from time to time, but I forgot about it and it wasn’t until our annual visit to Weekend of Horrors I got reminded of it when I found a blu-ray for 9 euro. I can’t stop myself when it comes to found footage - or fake footage as I prefer to call it - and bought it. Then it took me a couple of months to actually watch it, but that’s a completely different story.
The Tunnel - or The Tunnel Movie as it’s called also - should have been called Tunnels in my humble opinion, because that’s where it’s set - in the disused tunnels under Sydney, connected to the subways and - according to the film - having shelters left from WW2. Natasha (Bel Deliá) is a journalist who’s in desperate need of a story. She fucked up the last one and now she’s on the brink to loose her career. She convinces a cameraman, Steve (Steve Davis) and his sound guy Tangles (Luke Arnold) to follow her into the tunnels to investigate the rumours about homeless people living there. Producer Pete (Andy Rodoreda) joins them to keep an eye on Natascha and the team. After some troubles getting in they start their shoot and everything goes well… until one of them suddenly disappears! Someone...or something is down there and it’s very, very hungry! Trapped down in the mazes, will they ever come out alive?
Lets talk about something many movies in this special genre forgets: backstory. When you just get thrown into something mysterious without any fucking clue why these folks are doing what they’re doing - or their reasons for doing it is extremely uninteresting - the movie will fail. That goes for every kind of movie by the way. But look at the classics: in Blair Witch they’re shooting a doc about a witch, in Borderlands the catholic church is investigate the supernatural, in Welcome to the Jungle they’re gonna solve the mystery of Michael Rockefeller. They have something important to do, they’re just not kids who’s going out to party, smoke pot and fuck in the foods - leave those awesome things to the slashers. The Tunnel is packed with backstory and it takes a while for it to get going, but that’s fine with me. That’s actually one of the things that makes it a great thriller. You care about the characters and you understand why they’re doing this.
It also have one of the best reasons for filming everything, something that’s usually a problem in fake footage films: Steve decides to roll all the time because he’s not sure if they’re allowed to do this and needs proof that he and Tangles didn’t have anything to do with it all, except being camera and sound. That’s a good reason to shoot every damn second of their adventure.
Another strong point with The Tunnel is the wonderful locations, which makes it more credible. The actors are all fine and you believe in them. When the horror finally hits it’s quite subtle but scary and very disturbing. The first shot of what’s down there is very, very creepy and shot in a way you can’t figure it out to 100%, but still get an idea of what’s eating people in the darkness.
The Tunnel might not deliver something new and unique, but it’s extremely well-made and packs a lot of tension. I loved it and consider it one of the best horror films in that controversial sub-genre called found footage.
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