Deep beneath a ruined church founded by The Knights Templar in the mountains of Romania lies a horrible secret and it wants to get out. Not too bad of a premise eh? We’ve got history and mysticism and a really creepy vibe (mostly from the Romanians…) we can’t go wrong! That is, until the spelunkers enter the picture. That’s right; this is a film about cave explorers! You’ll thrill as they map out caves, wonder as they climb up and down various rocks, gasp at their pinions and ice hammers. Actually, cheer up it’s not all that bad; As you can see by the “All Star” cast, nobody is safe from getting torn limb from limb by a ravenous albino muskrat.

I seriously think that this entire movie was made because Cole Hauser (Jack) was insanely jealous of the contacts that Vin Diesel had in the Pitch Black movies. Cole, who played the cop William Johns in those films, now gets some pretty fancy peepers of his own. We even get some nice fuzzy Pitch Black style point-of-view shots to go with them. That being said though, Hauser proved to me that he’s a better actor than Diesel ever was (note the past tense, I’ll die before I see him as Hannibal). In this film, he plays the explorers ailing leader who may, or may not be, going slowly mad. The rest of the cast was fine as fodder, similar to the cast of Pitch Black, without any of the personality, with the notable exception of Daniel Dae Kim who (after seeing him for a year as Jin in Lost) surprised me with his flawless accent less English.

This film could have been really great and that’s what makes it so frustrating. We have a monster that scared the friggen' Knights Templar for God’s sake! We have a cold dark pit from which there is no escape, and we have an insane leader, taking his team deeper and deeper into what could be their tomb… But instead of playing on any these intrinsic fears we get 1/2 hour into the movie are hit with big group of Hollywood monsters, again. And while the non-stop running after the monsters show up is fairly exhilarating, it’s just not scary. The story also has a “twist” and a surprise ending, although the ending is predictable and the twist is given away way too early.

The film suffers the same affliction as most horror films today Need-to-see-a-monster-ites. If you never saw the monsters in this film, it would instantly get promoted to one of the better horror films in recent memory. It prematurely gives up its most precious plot points, and doesn’t tie up all of its loose ends. But even after all of its flaws, it’s still a pretty good time, it’s poorly lit and, as all spelunking films, has lots of footage of ropes and assess. Who doesn’t want to see that?

Dave can be reached at dkerr@detroitbuzz.com .