Abandoned Mine
by Jeff Chamberlain
Young people are stupid. Well, people are stupid, but young people seem to be the one's getting drunk in the wrong forest or disregarding the wrong legend. Abandoned Mine takes on the concept of dumb youth to a more realistic level having them get stuck in a mine. Well, there are ghosts too, in concept. Why don't I just back up
Abandoned Mine follows a group of friends getting together for Halloween. The beginning is interspersed with characters from later in the movie screaming as someone edits the footage together. There is some light, exposition. One of the girls is dating the other girl's ex-boyfriend but they're still friends, one of those girls had a brother killed overseas, and they all have... emotions and stuff. The backstory didn't draw me in at all and I was especially relieved when the central "horror plot" began.
This happens when Brad (Reiley McClendon), the ringleader of the night's festivities, takes the group out to an infamous mine known to be haunted. After regaling the group with a generic legend, the group winds up in the mine and eventually, stuck in said mine. The majority of the movie focuses around the characters facing more or less realism-based obstacles involving getting lost and stumbling around. This only changes slightly when they start getting picked off one by one by supposed ghosts. That is all.
Abandoned Mine isn't the worst film I've reviewed for the site by far and I wasn't begging it to end, but the annoying characters mixed with unspectacular events makes for a forgettable project. I'm not talking myself up at all but I figured out the outcome of the film with about 80% accuracy within a half hour of the mine activity happening. There's an extra punch added in but making sense of it is mostly on the part of the viewer.
The characters' actions are occasionally inconsistent. For example, Alexa Vega's character, Sharon, completely freaks out at even the slightest prank and takes everything super personally. However, when one of the other characters plays a joke right in the heart of when they first realize the severity of their "lost in an abandoned mine" situation, she laughs it off as if to say, "Thank you, you got it right. Only when I think I'm going to die and am still in said situation is it hilarious to play a fear-based prank on me. You're lucky I'm not safe and at ease right now or that wouldn't be cool." There are more examples of this kind of thing but it would go too much into the heart of how things turn out and I don't necessarily want to spoil anything.
It is important that I note that I do not blame any of the actors in the film at all. They all do a competent job with their respective roles and the ridiculousness that ensues falls on the writing and story arcs themselves. Exposition that seems important will occasionally be brought up and never dealt with again and a lot of it you just have to give up on making sense of in order to pay attention to what's happening. The opening would lead you to believe that the film would occasionally delve into found footage territory. This assumption is intensified when each character is fitted with a miner's helmet that contains a camera. The film however makes little use of this element and doesn't dive into found footage. This is fineas the found footage style is difficult to pull off and I don't think this particular movie would have handled it too well. The cameras do eventually play a role, but in a way that doesn't make much sense and is never fully explained.
For me, Abandoned Mine fits into the category of "why did they make this?" Not because it's absolutely terrible nor is it complete insanity. It's simply a familiar formula played out with little distinction between the multitude of others out there. I'm never surprised when Hollywood pumps the same kind of movie into theaters over and over again, but with a film that doesn't pay millions in advertising and hit thousands of screens upon release, it is up to the filmmaker to set itself apart. There is no reason to promote this movie with word-of-mouth and this is really the kiss of death for any film. The horror community has never been slave to mainstream tastes and making a truly unique and fun film can go a long way with word getting around. Abandoned Mine, however, did not go this route.
All in all, I wouldn't call Abandoned Mine a bad film. There were no moments of terrible acting or glaring errors. I didn't regret starting it and I still don't regret watching it, but there's nothing about it that stands out to me and I will probably forget I saw it pretty soon until I see one of the actors pop up in something else. It's not a film that I would advise steering clear of, but it's hardly one I would strongly recommend.
P.J. Griffin, HMS