The Cave
The Cave (mistakenly known by some as The Descent) is an Action/Horror movie released in 2005.
The story starts 30 years ago when an exploration team excavates an entrance under a Stone church in the Carpathian Mountains, and as they enter in a rockslide traps the explorers under the church, never to be heard from again. 30 years after that, a team of researchers led by Dr. Nicolai and his assistant, Dr. Kathryn begin to explore the area where the exploration team disappeared. Eventually they find access under the church in an underwater river, and a group of experienced divers join the two doctors in exploring further. As they progress along and begin to go deeper and deeper into the earth, Dr. Nicolai learns of the legend regarding the Church, which was built to seal something evil under it, and that Templar Knights would venture into these caves to fight horrid human-like winged demons.
As the research team goes deeper and deeper into the cave, eventually one of the divers are attacked by one of the more carnivorous inhabitants of the cave and causes his breathing apparatus to explode, collapsing the way out of the cave and trapping everybody one mile under, unable to go back and forced to go deeper into the cave in an attempt to get out.
As they go deeper, they discover more of these atrocious winged monsters, and they begin to attack them and killing them off one by one while the team attempts to defy yawning underground chasms, powerful underwater currents, and each other as they begin to learn more sinister things about each other and question whether or not they can trust each other as something begins to develop in their team mates...
At its base The Cave was a very good standalone movie, and while it was released at the same time as a couple other movies with similarities (such as The Descent and The Cavern), the movie was able to develop a cult following.
- Covers Always Lie: No, the team is not attacked by a massive subterranean water monster. While there are monsters and they do travel through water as well, they're human-sized.
- Dwindling Party
- Face Monster Turn - One of the explorers, after being attacked by one of the subterranean monsters, begins to start evolving (or mutating) into one of them, his eyes changing into a different shape while also being able to detect the monsters in complete darkness as well.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Jack blows up the last cavern while fighting one of the monsters to give the other survivors an opportunity to escape.
- Scary Scorpions - Our cast encounters transparent ones in one of the smaller tunnels.
- Tentative Light
- The Virus - Anyone who is unlucky enough to survive being attacked by the underground flying monsters eventually turns into one of them.
- Twist Ending - When the team finally escapes from the Cave, it turns out one of the doctors that entered with them is carrying the virus with them, and vanishes into the crowd of people.
- Was Once a Man: One of the monsters bears the same tattoo on its hand as one of the cavers previously seen entombed within the cave system at the beginning of the movie. Which bodes poorly for parasite-infected expedition leader Jack.