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Victoria goes
to visit her sister in Paris. She barely
gets to arrive before her sister drags her down in the
catacombs of France where a big party is being held.
It seems like this is going to be the trip of a lifetime
as things are finally looking up for Victoria who have
been suffering from depression for quite some time.
That is until Victoria gets lost in the catacombs with
a raving maniac after her...
The fate of Catacombs has been shaky ever since it
was completed. It was first going to be a theatrical
release but after bombing disastrously internationally,
it seemed as if this flick was aimed for a DTV release.
Well, FearNet wouldn't have that and decided to buy
the rights for this movie and it ended up getting sent
straight to cable. Since I don't have FearNet I haven't
been able to check it out until now since they've
put the entire movie up on their homepage to view for
free. If you ask me they should have sold it as an
online streaming rental instead and made some money
off of it, but I guess that was out of the question.
Watching a movie on the computer is definitely a turn
off and ruins a lot of the movie experience if you ask
me but I simply couldn't wait any longer to check this
one out, the suspense was killing me. Was it all worth
it? Not really. Catacombs is basically a poorly paced
and repetitive mix between The Descent and Creep where
we get to follow a paranoid girl while she's running
around in tunnels, screaming her brains out and praying
that her flashlight won't die on her. This is repeated
several times throughout the movie and the serial killer
only really shows up twice through the entire thing.
The situation just didn't feel that threatening. There's
barely any dialogue through the entire movie and the
ending is just terrible. Man I was so pissed off with
the ending, it just wasn't plausible.
On a more positive note however, Catacombs has everything
going for it. It's got a great cast (yeah! Pink was
awesome!), it's got great production values, it's got
a story filled with potential and there are some very
suspenseful moments to be found in here. It's too bad
that 40% of the movie felt like padding. Had this been
a short story with a more satisfying ending (the ending
will both piss you off and make you rather depressed),
Catacombs would have been a kick-ass ride, I'm sure of
it. The location is screaming of atmosphere and it's a
shame that they didn't manage to portray that on screen.
Ultimately, I was extremely disappointed with Catacombs
and I can see now why Lions Gate decided not to release
this in cinemas. It would have been lucky to make more
than ten million dollars all in all. It's a very
slow-paced horror flick that doesn't really feel like
a horror flick, it's more about the girl trying to find
a way out of the tunnels than it is about the serial
killer. This should have been great, too bad that they
had to go and screw it up like this.
A slashed throat and a broken leg. Bah!
It's Paris and they're playing rockish techno music that
feels like it was made in the late 90s? Come on! The
suspense score didn't work well either.
I'm wondering how much effort really went into making
this flick as there are a bunch of flaws to be found
in here that were so obvious that it wasn't even funny
(like when Victoria runs around with a pick-axe, oh
wait, she's not running with a pick-axe, oh, wait, she
is, or is she?). Catacombs was a disappointment to me
as I had hoped for so much more than a mediocre flick
about a girl trying to find a way out of some tunnels.
This should have been great. I'm so disappointed.
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