Dead Mine [2012]

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 fucked 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, similar to 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 needed to be better. The thing that I missed the most was 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…

Director: Steven Sheil

Writers:  Ziad Semaan, Steven Sheil

Cast: Sam Hazeldine, Mike Lewis, Trever Love, Ario Bayu, Afwan, Rustam Effendi

Fun Facts: If you are intersted more into the story about Yamashita’s gold check out this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamashita’s_gold

Rating:

IMDb Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2171847/