Trapped in a London subway station, a woman who’s being pursued by a potential attacker heads into the unknown labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city’s streets
I had never heard of this movie when I came across this in a chat room and decided to look into it. When I got it I didn’t watch it for a few weeks. I turned it on and noticed that it was British. While I’ve nothing against British movies, I’ve ran into a lot of crappy films by them as of late. So I was a bit leery of this movie. For me this was good to go into this with low expectations because it made it that much better when it turned out to be a really good movie, in my opinion.
While it’s not the most original story that I’ve seen, this one just felt like it had a little heart and I really was drawn
into the story and wanted to see what happened to the characters. To me, this is what I look for in a movie. Now we only really have two main characters (Kate and the creep) but it’s better to have fewer characters to focus on. The Synopsis: is a little misleading because it’s not just a potential attacker but, rather, a deformed, super strong creature of a man. This changes the tone of the movie quite a bit.
Let’s start with the story itself. A woman, Kate, goes to the subway for a ride to supposedly meet George Clooney. She drinks a little too much and falls asleep waiting for her train to arrive. She wakes up hours later in an empty subway station (how the workers or riders didn’t find her and wake her up, I don’t know but you have to just accept it and move on). As she walks around, she meets the CREEP! He has been killing and feeding on people for years, probably mostly homeless in the subway. That’s the basics of this film; it sounds simple but the acting, special effects, camera work and atmosphere truly makes up for it.
The movie really has two different atmospheres to it. One is the cleaner subway station where the riders go, which reminds me of An American werewolf in London where the werewolf chases the businessman through the empty subway halls and Gates. The second atmosphere is the gritty, dungy and less lit lower levels of the subway station, which is very much similar to that of Saw or Texas chainsaw massacre. Both atmospheres different but both are creepy in their own way.
The creep is definitely the most creepy, freaky aspect of this movie. In my opinion, he looks just like Golem from Lord of the rings. Very creep with pale, gray skin and creepiest of all is that he doesn’t say a word the whole movie (maybe just one) but mostly makes a screechy sound like a bat. He also, although he appears to be mentally ill, tries to perform surgery on a pregnant woman with rusted tools. This is the goriest scene of the whole film, not for the weak of stomach. We do get to see a little into the past of the creep but mostly we must infer it from what we see, not directly shown to us. I do wish that they would have shown us a little more.
The acting is pretty good for a list of actors I’ve never heard of this. Franka Potente is great as Kate and you really care about what happens to her character. She is a strong female character and she never gives up.
This movie left me with a feeling of sadness, for Kate, the homeless and the creep (because he doesn’t really seem to know what he is doing and he seems alone, not unlike Golem). It just felt disturbing which, in my opinion, makes for a good horror movie.
Overall, I feel that this movie has almost all of the traits that I look for in a horror movie. I recommend it to all horror
fans out there. While it’s not perfect and you have to suspend belief for some of the holes in the story, it more than makes up for it with atmosphere and the suspense of running away from a seemingly supernatural killer.
