Yay! My little sister, Silly Sister Sarah (Sarah Fleming for professional purposes), finally has a feature length film out with her having full Costume Design credit. It’s a horror movie called The Cavern (previously titled WIthIN) produced by Dead Crow Productions and distributed by Sony Pictures straight to DVD. I was so excited! Then I saw the film, and I wasn’t so excited. Then I thought about it more and talked to my sister about it’s making, and I’m excited again.

First off, I should mention the budget. It was made for $150,000, so it cost much less to make than the catering for Pirates of the Caribbean. In comparison, The Cave (also distributed by Sony Pictures), the other cave-based horror made about the same time but put out for theatrical release, cost $30 million to make (when I went to buy some more v-neck undershirts, I noticed Walmart is currently selling that movie boxed with The Cavern, allowing you to get both a big studio and an indie cave-based horror movie together for one low price!).
To me the, the whole concept of how you distribute and make money off of a no-budget movie is fascinating. Apparently the strategy for Sony Pictures is to package the DVD as professionally as possible as then put a big sticker on front of the box that says, “New Feature Film!” to tell you for certain, “No, you haven’t heard of this movie before.” The DVD was actually well done with an animated menu and everything (I’m guessing Sony Pictures spentt more to put together the DVD than the Dead Crow spent making the movie). They, of course, included tons of movie previews on it (mainly for theatrical releases I’ve heard of), but, strangely enough, only automatically play one when you put the DVD in. The special features include the trailer (the bare minimum for special features), director commentary from director Olatunde Osunsanmi, a making of documentary, and a documentary on actual caving. I only bothered to watch the making of documentary since my sister was featured in that and it showed the incident with a propane tank that almost blew up everybody (luckily only a car was destroyed; another car spontaneously combusted when production started – low budget movies really can’t afford so many cars exploding when it’s not part of the plot). Here’s a big one, though – the documentary was mastered for widescreen! Almost no DVDs bother to master the special features for widescreen. I’ll give almost an extra half-star to the review just for that.
Enough about packaging – let’s get to the movie! To my great disappointment, there were no opening credits since Costume Design is always in the opening credits (on the other hand, the quick list of cast and crew on the back of the DVD – similar to what you see at the bottom of movie posters – lists “Costume Design SARAH FLEMING”, so she is right there on the movie packaging). Instead, there’s what I found to be a pretty effective title reveal to set the mood for the film.
The movie starts with a short segment of the group camping before they explore the cave which contained the only part of the film that screamed low-budget – a CGI fire for their campfire (my sister explained they were too low budget to pay off park officials to allow them an actual campfire). This segment was just long enough to establish the characters, mention why caving is interesting (“Caves are the last unexplored territory on earth.”), and casually drop that no one other than those in the group knew they were there at this unexplored cave (the setting is some desert in some nation split off from Russia – I forget the name). Oh, and there was a mention of some disaster two years earlier when some of the main characters were caving – a subplot I thought added nothing to the film.
Anyway, you don’t have to wait long until they’re actually in the cave and soon hunted by some unknown presence. Here’s where it gets both good and bad. The good is it looks like they are actually exploring a real cave in cramped quarters with little light (while the documentary reveals it’s all on a raised soundstage). The bad is that all the action is in cramped caves with little light; the choice was realism over cinematography. Maybe part of the problem was how I viewed the film; SarahK (a.k.a., the other Sarah Fleming) doesn’t like horror films, so she’d only watch it during the day. This is a movie that must be watched in the dark as there are a couple sequences where things go completely black that, in daylight, looks like I just turned off the TV and left my sound system on. Still, the whole choice to go somewhat Blair Witch style with the cameras (they get shaky and even turn upside down when things get panicky) didn’t work for me. It obscured the action too much, in my opinion, and got quite tiresome near the end. It was a neat idea and an interesting risk for the first time director – one reviewer on IMDB who claims to be an actual caver (and hopefully isn’t a sock puppet) says the film realistically portrayed exploring a cave. Still, I watch movies to be able to see things, and my favorite scene was when they waited to ambush what was after them (unlike many other horror films, some of these characters were smart enough to come armed) in a flooded cavern, and the camera actually panned back a bit for a nice money shot.
My biggest problem was the ending, which I found confusing and disappointing. While the film kept me interested for most of it as the acting was good (though the women hyperventilated too much and I couldn’t understand them) and there was plenty of well established tension, by the end I was tired of the screaming and the shaky camera work and was like, “Just explain what’s after them and end this, already!” In a 90-minute film, it’s pretty bad when you begin to check your watch. The conclusion came out of left-field, and I didn’t find it satisfying at all. The film actually could have been decent if it weren’t for the ending.
One other complaint was the sound effects for the gore seemed over the top… but, then again, I don’t know what it sounds like to actually disembowel someone. On the other hand, the actual gore was well-done.
I guess I should mention the costume design since that’s what I watched the movie for. Well, they all wore cave gear. My sister’s work was mainly off camera in getting enough of the same outfit for each character for all the scenes while staying in budget and then aging the outfits and keeping continuity (can’t have blood spatter change from scene to scene which can be hard when scenes are filmed out of order). It’s actually a lot of work that had her on the set every day, but the sort of thing that’s invisible on screen (if done competently – and my sister is nothing if not competent– and silly).
BTW, the movie ends with really cool but hard to read credit sequence that looks like it took up half the budget. My sister’s name appears just before the credits flash the name of the movie again followed by the rest of the credits for the more minor crew.
All in all, I give the movie two stars out of five… and that’s trying my best not to be biased since my sister was involved. I didn’t like it, but I could imagine some people really liking it (it’s easier for me to imagine than that some people really liked the Oscar nominated The Thin Red Line – what the hell was up with that film?). If you really like horror films (or caves), it’s worth a rental. Everyone else, I’d stay away unless you’re just so curious what a $150,000 movie looks like.
Myself, I’ll probably go back and listen to some of the commentary (I want the ending explained; also, in some point of the commentary, Osunsanmi mentions my sister). This movie also shows enough promise that I’m interested in what Osunsanmi will do with his next film. Apparently, he has a great premise for his next film (and, hopefully, my sister will be attached to that project as well). Also, with The Descent (yet another cave-based horror movie – this one with an $8 million budget) coming to U.S. theaters, maybe some cable channel will pick up The Cavern to play off the free promotion… but nothing is currently in the works.
The next feature length film out with my sister as Costume Design will be a (presumably) dumb action flick which SarahK should like better (here’s her very short review of The Cavern). It’s called Backlash and stars an accomplished stuntwoman who had a role on 24 last season. And yes, I’ll probably have a long review for that when it comes out.
Until then, be honorable, ronin.
P.S. I asked my sister why most low budget movies tend to be horror movies even though horror movie barely ever tend to be good movies in their own right. She answered, “Would you rather see a bad drama or a bad horror movie?” Good point.