Leave all logic at the surface prior to entering the elevator.

Anna Ferdorova(?) is an epidemiologist working on a vaccine that goes horribly wrong and kills her colleague. After she vanishes, the Russian military find her again and ask her to investigate the disappearance of the staff working in a facility based around a drill site in the Russian wilderness.

Claustrophobic horror is one of my favourites, along with unfathomable evil; but this movie just failed to deliver. Any scientific sensibility is discarded for the purpose of having cool and badass senseless scenes. Even as a layman I can see that Anna takes risky and unsafe actions when investigating infectious and toxic microorganisms. She puts herself at risk constantly and proves to be a liability for the team. There isn't much context around the underground facility or the discovery at the bottom, very little towards the ultimate goal of the research expedition - really just one or two lines.

Even less about Anna's background and how that shaped her reactions. I almost felt like she let herself have the movie happen to her.

The group becomes stuck in the facility when Gorgiev(?), the lead scientist refuses to allow them to resurface and steals the key to the elevator after forcing the elevator to go hyperspeed which knocks everyone unconscious. There are a mix of American and vaguely European accents amongst the cast.

Also there's a really gross and forced relationship between Anna and one of the soldiers who actually shoves her into a wall while brawling with another character lmao. If anything the physical effects are very very good. The special effects are not amazing, especially the spores and the places where lots of CG is used. I felt disappointed by the poor filming and direction around the final climactic scenes.


Ultimately this movie reminds me of Underwater with Kristen Stewart and Last of Us 2 (you'll see why) but significantly worse than what a combination of this could have been.