Researchers in SFF and horror movies always have such good ideas. Touch the creepy thing! Go into the dark place! Make friends with the scary organism! Or, in the upcoming film The Devil Below, head into some abandoned mines to find out what their deal is! There’s got to be some friendly, welcoming reason they’ve been on fire for years.
You probably see where this is going.
The Devil Below is directed by Bradley Parker, who has an interesting background in visual effects (he’s the visual effects supervisor for Loki, among other things). He also directed Chernobyl Diaries, which also features a bunch of people wandering around in a dramatic and clearly unsafe locale. Co-writer Eric Scherbarth also wrote and directed a short film, Sinkhole, with a somewhat similar premise involving “smoldering abandoned coal mines.”
These researchers are smart enough to realize they’re in a dicey situation (how many version of “This isn’t good?” are uttered in the trailer?) but something obviously makes them stick around, and it’s not the older fella whose job is protecting people from whatever’s in those mines. The trailer suggests a little bit of The Descent, a pinch of Tremors (especially on the movie’s poster), a nod to the Centralia mine fire, and just the faintest whiff of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina‘s mines, in which you can find a literal gate to hell. But visiting Sabrina’s hell sounds a lot more fun that what goes on here. The Devil Below arrives on demand on March 5th.
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