Caved In: Prehistoric Terror (2006), a Sci-Fi Channel original, is simply awful. In a salt mine in Switzerland circa 1948, a couple miners get in a fist fight & accidentally punch a hole with their fists into a big cavern full of emeralds & giant cartoony-looking CGI rhinocerous beetles that eventually we shall hear roaring like lions.
 It took an extra minute or two to focus on the beetles, because I was still pondering miners punching through cavern walls with their fists.
It has no actors of interest, the closest being Colm Meany who'll interest Star Trek spin-off die-hards.
The miners are decimated by bugs but manage to blow themselves up & seal the cave. One guy, though reduced to a gibbering idiot for life, gets out with a map of where the bugs & emeralds are to be found.
Scene shifts to early in the new millenium. A cretinish suburban nuclear family has a father who drags them around the world mountain climbing & spelunking. He's a professional adventure guide, which just so bores the daughter, though the son is kind of into it.
Dad promised they can go to Disney World but he's unexpectedly hired to go spelunking in a salt mine & caverns, for some villains who are following the rumor of emeralds. Daughter is just so mad it's not Disney World until she sees one of the villains is a hot studmuffin. Too bad for her he'll soon be ordered to kill her.
Dad of course didn't know he was being hired by dangerous gangsters who have the map of the recently deceased madman. His line of employement doesn't require that you know who you're dealing with or that they have any background in caving.
The gangsters are tired of the easy money to be made stealing, pimping, & running gambling concerns. They've decided it'll be ever so criminally profitable to go gem-hunting deep in the earth, & of course mining for emeralds just like spelunking requires no experience or training of any kind, it's supposed to be in-&-out, rich for life.
Although the mines have been closed for more than fifty years, all it takes is a flick of a switch to turn on the lights & get the electric elevator going. When they reach areas that are natural caves, those are well lit too.
Within the underground world, stuff just gets phonier & phonier. Here's a list of what the luckless viewer will learn from this movie:
- Caves are never dark
- Caves are wired for electricity
- Giant man-killing insects live in caves
- Giant bugs love emeralds
- Caves & mines are the same thing
- Gangsters own laser rifles, which can cut through rock
- Gangsters like working as miners
- CGI bugs look ridiculous
- To mine for gems you just need a bag big enough to carry them home
- Yelling & fighting in caves can trigger earthquakes
- Rhinocerous beetles have a social order similar to termites
- Giant beetles won't eat the good guys.
I mean seriously, when the Sci-Fi Channel issues their stuff on DVD, the law should require a label: "Warning, This Is A Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie."
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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