The Place For The Latest Movie Reviews
Cast: Danny Trejo, Kinga Phillips, Frank Krueger
Below the streets of New York is a dark and dangerous world hidden in the shadows of abandoned subway tunnels and miles of forgotten infrastructure. When a young documentary filmmaker goes into these tunnels to uncover the unseen stories of the people living below our feet, she finds out that there is more to be afraid of than the dark. A mysterious figure, living beyond the reach of the law, has declared war on the outside world that threatens to tear apart the fragile underground society living in the tunnels and maybe even the city above it.
"20ft Below: The Darkness Descending" is a feature film based off a 5-episode web-series called "The Darkness Descending" that premiered online back in 2009. The movie tells the story of a young and beautiful documentary filmmaker who ventures down into the abandoned subway tunnels of New York City to do a story on the homeless people living down there. But she gets more than she bargained for when she meets Angel, a ruthless gang leader that believes a lot of people that reside "above" need to pay for their sins. There is a bit more to the story as the Police get involved as well but I am not going to ruin all that here.
Danny Trejo is front and center on the DVD cover but he is not in the film all that much and when he is on screen he is not really doing much either. Trejo has been in a lot of films as of late and most have been below average and this is follows suit. He does try his best here but he does not have anything to work with. "20 Ft Below" struggles to be average because of some poor writing and bad dialogue. I did like the fact that they attempted to develop the characters in the film mostly by showing interviews from the filmmaker but the story never really goes anywhere and it doesn't produce any sense of dread at all.
I do like the basic idea of the story and think it could of been a lot better with a little script work because I did like what the tried to do with the characters and I liked the look but it just never panned out. Acting wise I thought the actors did a pretty job considering what they had to work with here including Trejo. There is not much here to recommend really, I guess I could recommend it to Trejo fans that have to watch every film he is in. Other than that I would pass on this one. My rating for this film is only because the film has a bit of star power in Trejo and the rest of the cast did a good job as well.
Released by Vertical Entertainment
** Out Of *****