A selection of cave movies will tell fans of tickling their nerves about what movie stories mention the theme of speleology, research under the surface of the earth and the dark secrets that hide the dark vaults. Collapses, creepy monsters, human dramas and tragedies – all this directors include in their pictures, putting together pieces of a full-fledged narrative, which takes your breath away.
Thirteen Lives
- IMDB Rating – 7.8
- Genre: Thriller, Drama, Biography
- Production: UK / 2022
- Budget: $55,000,000
- Director: Ron Howard
- Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, Joel Edgerton, Tom Bateman, Paul Gleeson, Girati Sugiyama, Tiradon Supapunpinjo, Pasakorn Hoyhon, Tanatat Srita, Nophand Bunyai.
The movie is based on a real-life tragedy that happened in 2018 in Thailand, when a children’s soccer team along with their coach became trapped and cut off from life inside the Thamluannangnongnon cave, which filled with water due to the rain that began to fall.
Rescuers carried out rescue operations for 18 days to get the twelve teenagers and one adult out. The movie portrays the courage of the twelve boys as they struggled throughout to survive in these terrible conditions.
Almost the entire movie was filmed in Australia and a few scenes in Thailand.
Initially, Rowan Atkinson was invited to play the role of John Volanthen. But he refused the offer, and then approved Colin Farrell.
The Last Descent
- IMDB Rating – 5.7
- Genre: Drama
- Production: USA / 2016
- Director: Isaac Halasima
- Starring: Chadwick Hopson, Alexis Johnson, Landon Henneman, Jillian Petrie, Jacob Omer, Mason D. Davis, Ben Lockie, Dalek Atkinson, Canyon Canary
A medical student named John has often been on speleological expeditions with his father, brother, and friends since he was a child, and he was completely at ease with the confined spaces, the darkness of the dungeons, and the drops falling measuredly from the stalactites.
One day, however, he found himself in such a dangerous position during one of the descents that even he became frightened. As the rescuers struggled to pull him out, John distracted himself from the eerie sensations by reminiscing about the events of his past years.
The movie is based on real events: even the main character’s name was exactly the same as the character in the movie. From the cave, the real John never returned to the surface.
Sanctum
- IMDB Rating – 5.9
- Genre: Thriller, Drama, Adventure
- Production: USA, Australia / 2010
- Budget: $30,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $108,609,310
- Director: Alistair Grierson
- Starring: Richard Roxburgh, Joan Griffith, Reese Wakefield, Alice Parkinson. Daniel Willey, Christopher James Baker, Alison Crutchley, Kramer Kane, Andrew Hansen, John Garvin
A few people, keen on speleology, make their way into the largest cave system on Earth. Suddenly, a tropical storm strikes, leaving the only known exit inaccessible.
Now the team will have to wander under the water that has filled the caves in search of a new way out. Whether the heroes will live to find another unknown exit is unknown: the underground passages surrounding them are too dangerous.
This movie was also not without a true story at its core. In reality, cave explorers were trapped in the Swallow Cave in Mexico.
The Descent (a trilogy)
- IMDB Rating – 7.2
- Genre: Horror, Thriller, Adventure
- Production: UK / 2005
- Budget: £3,500,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $57,051,053
- Director: Neil Marshall
- Starring: Shauna MacDonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, MayAnna Boehring, Nora-Jane Noon, Oliver Milburn, Molly Caille, Craig Conway, Leslie Simpson.
A group of young extreme women go for a walk through the vaulted passages underground, but it turns out that the entrance is blocked. It turns out that the leader of the expedition chose the wrong caves, about the event in which the rescuers would have learned…
Suddenly the heroines are attacked by humanoid feral creatures; it becomes even more difficult to get out. The rescuers do arrive, but only at the beginning of the events of the second part, when one of the girls manages to reach the surface and call the locals for help.
Despite its low-budget nature, the first of the trilogy was the best cave horror film and overall in the 2007 Saturn Awards.
The Cave
- IMDB Rating – 5.8
- Genre: Thriller, Drama
- Production: Thailand, Ireland / 2019
- Director: Tom Waller
- Starring: Jim Warnie, Ekawat Niratvorapanya, James Edward Holley, Nopadol Niemka, Jhumpa Saenprom, Jhumpa Saenprom, Todd Ruiz, Trichada Petcharath, Apa Bhavilai, Niruth Sirichanya
A dozen young soccer players descended with their coach under the vaults of stone arches, but they were trapped in a cave that threatened to kill them all. The authorities were unaware that there were more caves in the area where the entire soccer team was lost than the rescuers had anticipated.
As a result, for two long weeks, dive specialists, authorities, local residents and even a Thai businessman tried to do everything possible to prevent the twelve boys and their coach from being killed.
In 2018, a similar story actually happened in Thailand: experienced speleologists and divers from all over the world went to rescue the soccer players.
Time Trap
- IMDB Rating – 6.3
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Detective, Adventure
- Production: USA / 2017
- Budget: $3,000,000
- Director: Mark Dennis, Ben Foster
- Starring: Brianna Howey, Cassidy Gifford, Olivia Dragusevich, Reilly McClendon, Max Wright, Andrew Wilson, Sabin Smith, Rich Skidmore
Mr. Hopper, a professor of archaeology, is about to find a lead to his parents, who years ago went in search of the legendary Fountain of Youth. Soon he disappears himself; then the students decide that it is time to rescue their professor and follow him.
During the expedition, they discover that inside the cave there is a time anomaly: any number of years can pass outside, but inside it will seem like only a few seconds, if not less.
Some of the filming was done in the same caves as the 1960s Batman series, and some of it was done in Texas, in the caves of Sonora.
The Cave
- IMDB Rating – 5.2
- Genre: Horror, Fantasy, Action Movie
- Production: USA, Romania, Mexico / 2005
- Budget: $30,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $33,296,457
- Director: Bruce Hunt
- Starring: Cole Hauser, Eddie Cibrian, Morris Chestnut, Lina Headey, Piper Perabo, Rick Ravanello, Daniel Dae Kim, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Marchel Juresh, Vlad Radescu.
An ancient temple in the Carpathian Mountains was built by the Templars; beneath it is a passageway leading to a network of underground passages where a group of speleologists disappeared during Ceausescu’s reign. Now a new team is hired to wander through the same spaces to explore them properly.
A landslide cuts the scientists off from the entrance, and the passages turn out to be not uninhabited at all: there live creepy and hungry creatures that start hunting the group of explorers. The members of the expedition risk disappearing, just like their predecessors.
In order to shoot scenes underwater, they used a huge aquarium specially created for them: it can hold up to three million liters of liquid.
As Above, So Below
- IMDB Rating – 6.2
- Genre: Horror, Detective
- Production: USA / 2014
- Budget: $5,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $41,898,409
- Director: John Eric Dowdle
- Starring: Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge, François Civil, Marion Lambert, Ali Marhiar, Cosme Castro, Hamid Javadan, Theo Sholby, Amy Levy
Scarlett Marlowe is a cryptographer, engaged in the business that was started by her father, who ended his life of his own free will due to family circumstances. Now the girl is looking for the secret of Nicolas Flamel, the legendary owner of the Philosopher’s Stone, which allows its owner to live forever and turn any metal material into gold.
The search leads Scarlett to the catacombs under Paris, namely – in the area of the tomb of Nicholas himself. To get to the goal through the long tunnels, there are many dangers to overcome.
Authorities in the French capital have allowed moviegoers to film in real Parisian catacombs.
The Tunnel
- IMDB Rating – 5.9
- Genre: Horror, Thriller, Detective
- Production: Australia / 2011
- Budget: A$135,000
- US box office receipts: $1,532
- Director: Carlo Ledesma
- Starring: Belle Delia, Andy Rodoreda, Steve Davis, Luke Arnold, Goran D’Clue, James Caitlin, Ben McLain, Peter McAllum, Rebecca Clay, Shannon Harvey.
The government of the largest and oldest Australian city of Sydney is going to solve problems related to water supply. To do this, they want to use water stagnating in tunnels located under the city land.
However, homeless people are disappearing in the same tunnels. One of the journalists starts to think that there is something wrong with the whole affair, and she decides to investigate the situation herself. The film crew goes down and moves through the underground passages, but is unexpectedly attacked.
The movie was the debut for director Carlo Ledesma.
La cueva
- IMDB Rating – 5.7
- Genre: Horror, thriller
- Production: Spain / 2013
- Worldwide box office: $221,858
- Director: Alfredo Montero
- Starring: Marcos Ortiz, Marta Castellote, Eva Garcia-Vacas, Jorge Paez, Joel Fernandez
The journey of five companions began as an ordinary tourist trip to a warm island land. While hiking along forest paths and the coast, the friends decide to climb into the entrance to a dungeon to see what might be interesting inside.
However, right in the middle of their attempt to explore a new place, they lose their direction of movement and have no idea which way the exit is… The absence of other people around and mobile communication underground, darkness and silence create a fertile ground for panic and hallucinations.
An American horror magazine called Fangoria gave the film a score of two out of ten, but emphasized that the story of people’s inner demons appearing on the outside in extreme situations paints a rather “disturbing portrait of humanity.”
Creep
- IMDB Rating – 5.6
- Genre: Horror, Thriller, Detective
- Production: UK, Germany / 2004
- Worldwide box office: $7,480,424
- Director: Christopher Smith
- Starring: Franca Potente, Wes Blackwood, Sean Harris, Paul Rattray, Kelly Scott, Strapper, Jeremy Sheffield, Ken Campbell, Morgan Jones, Deborah Weston.
What’s a London lady who can’t find a cab to do? Go to one of the nearest tube stations, of course. That’s what Kate did. However, it was already quite late, and she missed the last train, dozing off right on the bench….
The station closed until morning, the subway workers didn’t notice the girl and left her alone all night. Suddenly, some train approaches from the tunnel – completely empty and seemingly completely ordinary. Kate hopes that she can at least get home on it, but on the way it turns out that a night alone at the station would be much more peaceful.
In many horror movies, music plays a huge role; here it’s almost non-existent, but that doesn’t get in the way of getting the necessary impression.
Beneath
- IMDB Rating – 5.4
- Genre: Horror, Thriller, Drama, Detective, Adventure
- Production: USA / 2013
- Director: Ben Ketai
- Starring: Jeff Faye, Kelly Noonan, Joey Kern, Brent Briscoe, Mark L. Young, Eric Etebari, Kurt Caceres, Lauren Gorse, Molly Hagan
A tragic disaster occurs at the mine, as a result of which the underground workers find themselves submerged two hundred meters and with virtually no chance of rescue. Despair takes over their minds, and the poisonous vapors and gases in the air fill their lungs.
Some are looking for a way out, still hoping that they will be able to get out in a very short period of time, while others are completely out of their minds and start attacking others, sincerely believing that they have nothing to lose.
A similar disaster actually took place at one of the planet’s mines.
Urban Explorer
- IMDB Rating – 5.2
- Genre: Horror, Thriller
- Production: Germany / 2011
- Budget: $3,000,000
- Director: Andy Fecher
- Starring: Nathalie Kelly, Nick Eversmann, Klaus Stieglmeyer, Max Rimelt, Katrin de Lean, Brenda Koo, Adolfo Assor, Johannes Claussner, Andreas Wisniewski, Kai Michael Walter.
Fans of walking through the subterranean passageways beneath cities decide to walk through Berlin – not the part that is visible to all tourists, but the part that is hidden from view underground. The guide hired by the explorers is injured after a bad fall.
Two of the group go to find help, while two stay with the guide. Armin emerges from somewhere in the intricacy of the underground paths: long ago he worked as a border guard on the East German side. The boys think that Armin wants to help them and let him lead the way.
The film won the grand prize at the 2011 Screamfest, a festival of horror films about dungeons and beyond called “Screamfest” in Los Angeles.
Stag Night
- IMDB Rating – 4.8
- Genre: Horror, Thriller
- Production: USA / 2008
- Budget: $1,500,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $45,927
- Director: Peter E. Dowling
- Starring: Kip Pardoo, Vinessa Shaw, Breckin Meyer, Scott Adkins, Carl Geary, Sarah Barrand, Rachel Oliva, Luka Bercovici, Gerady Ganchev, Radoslav Parvanov.
A quartet of cheerful and tipsy guys are out celebrating a bachelor party at one of them. Going to move to a new pub, the friends run to the subway to get on the last of the trains, and at the same time get acquainted with a couple of girls there.
However, one unpleasantness prevents everyone from getting to the place: the young people find themselves at a station that no one has been to since the seventies of the last century. Trying to find a way out, the young people meet homeless people who could help them… If they were not too aggressive.
Despite the rather large budget, there are surprisingly few drawn special effects, but it has the right atmosphere and fountaining blood – everything you need for a thrash horror underground.
End of the Line
- IMDB Rating – 5.9
- Genre: Horror, Thriller
- Production: Canada / 2007
- Budget: CA$ 200,000
- Director: Maurice Devereux
- Starring: Ilona Elkin, Nicholas Wright, Neil Napier, Emily Shelton, Tim Rozon, Nina Phillis, Joan McBride, Danny Blanco, John Wamwas, Robin Wilcock.
A nurse’s job is to help people all the time, often from morning until late at night. Karen’s shifts end late, but the last subway train runs so late that she and a few other passengers manage to catch it.
If these people knew who they were going to meet in the dark tunnels of the night, they would prefer to walk home… The humanoid creatures with red eyes, as if covered in some kind of rottenness from head to toe, are too scary to look at.
One of the movie’s phrases, shown as text, hints that the characters are just hallucinating because of the weird cupcakes they each ate before the scary events, and nothing terrible is actually happening.
Eden Log
- IMDB Rating – 5.3
- Genre: Horror, Fiction, Thriller, Detective
- Production: France / 2007
- Worldwide box office: $157,350
- Director: Franck Vestiel
- Starring: Clovis Cornillac, Vimala Pons, Zohar Wexler, Sifan Shao, Arben Bayraktaray, Abdel Kader Dahu, Tony Amoni, Antonin Bastian.
A man named Tolbiak finds himself in the middle of an underground space, surrounded by some terrible dirt, and even in the company of a corpse of a man unknown to him. His mind is so empty that he doesn’t remember how he got here.
He has to figure out what happened and at the same time find the keys that will help him to open the veil of secrecy that shrouds an extremely strange place, which turned out to be a frightening possession of a very secret and quite cruel organization.
The film focuses a lot on philosophy – both in terms of human psychology and its typical fears, as well as civilization’s mutually hostile interaction with nature.
Catacombs
- IMDB Rating – 5.4
- Genre: Horror, thriller
- Production: USA, Italy, Romania / 2006
- Worldwide Box Office: $2,455,422
- Director: Tomm Coker, David Elliot
- Starring: Shannyn Sossamon, Pink, Emil Hostina, Sandy Dragoi, Kebral Ibaka, Radu Andrei Micu, Kane, DJ Costa, Marcello Cobzariu, Marinela Celaru.
In Paris lives a girl named Carolyn, who loves everything scary and creepy, and her sister Victoria, who has been suffering from mental disorders for a long time and needs antidepressants, comes to visit her.
Carolyn calls her to an unusual party set right in the middle of the Parisian dungeons. During the event, Victoria learns that the place is inhabited by a certain young man who wears a goat mask and was raised by satanic sectarians. She meets this man after getting a little lost in the passages….
The movie was actually filmed not in the capital of France, but in Romania, known for its creepy fairy tales.
The Pyramid
- IMDB Rating – 4.6
- Genre: Horror, Thriller, Detective
- Production: USA, Morocco / 2014
- Budget: $6,500,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $16,861,137
- Director: Gregory Levasseur
- Starring: Ashley Hinshaw, Denis O’Hare, James Buckley, Christa Nicola, Amir Kamiab, Faikal Attougui, Philip Shelley, Ait Hamou Amin, Omar Benbrahim, Joseph Beddelem
On the screen – 2013; a team of Egyptologists digs up an ancient pyramid with three sides, which turns out to be much older than its other “sisters”. There is an armed coup d’état, and the foreigners are required to leave the borders of Egypt.
However, contrary to common sense, the scientists stay where they were. Even more than that – they go inside the building they discovered, not worrying a bit about what might happen. Suddenly, when they start looking for the lost robot, they fall into an even deeper dungeon.
In fact, the inhabitants of ancient Egypt did not create three-sided pyramids, and “bald” cats appeared only in the sixties of the last century as a result of selection, but for fiction it is quite acceptable to “shove” in the past and both.
7 Guardians of the Tomb
- IMDB Rating – 4.5
- Genre: Action, Adventure, Horror
- Production: China, Australia, Russia, Thailand / 2017
- Worldwide box office: $7,910,928
- Director: Kimble Randall
- Starring: Li Bingbing, Kellan Lats, Wu Chun, Kelsey Grammer, Shane Jacobson, Stef Dawson, Jason Chong, Eva Liu
Archaeological expedition is equipped with all the rules to go on a trip, the purpose of which – ancient tombs. Before this team, one researcher has already gone there, but for some reason he never came back to his comrades – you should try to find him.
But none of the scientists knows what could make their colleague stay inside… Who could have guessed that the tombs are filled not only with ancient dust and remains of people who left this world long ago, but also with bloodthirsty intelligent creatures?
One theory concocted by fans is that the ruler and one of his older subjects turned into huge spider-like creatures themselves due to a mutation.
Black Water: Abyss
- IMDB Rating – 4.5
- Genre: Horror, Action
- Production: Australia / 2020
- Worldwide box office: $990,649
- Director: Andrew Traucki
- Starring: Jessica McNamee, Luke Mitchell, Amalie Golden, Benjamin Hotges, Anthony Sharp, Louis Toshio Okada, Rumi Kikuchi, Stew Kirk
In Australia, it is not at all uncommon to experience storms that are quite dangerous in their strength, typical of any tropical area. It is quite possible to survive this natural disaster and even not to suffer much, especially if people are not on the ground, but under its surface….
However, the group of tourists did not manage to completely avoid the danger: instead of the storm, they hid from it in a dungeon and met an ancient creature – a special species of crocodile, which scientists believed to be long extinct.
The movie is a sequel to “Predatory Waters”, released back in 2007.
Cave
- IMDB Rating – 4.2
- Genre: Thriller, Crime, Adventure
- Production: Norway / 2016
- Director: Henrik Martin Dalsbakken
- Starring: Heidi Toini, Mads Sjøgard Pettersen, Benjamin Helstad, Ingar Helge Gimle
As the battles of World War II raged around the world, many groups of Nazis sought refuge from reprisals wherever they could. These people were also preserved in a complex of caves unexplored by modern science.
However, they have not survived to our days: nothing but remains testify to their stay in these places. Meanwhile, a trio of travelers is already moving along the passages, and each of them is involved in a rather emotional romantic triangle.
Experienced viewers of horror movies may think that the movie is rather secondary, but it is still able to arouse interest. The main place in creating the right mood here is occupied by music and beautifully executed visualization.
Diggers
- IMDB Rating – 3.6
- Genre: Horror
- Production: Russia / 2016
- Budget: ₽ 52,000,000
- Worldwide Box Office: $631,515
- Director: Tikhon Kornev
- Starring Roman Evdokimov, Anna Vasilieva-Abramovich, Alyona Savastova, Vladimir Kuznetsov, Andrey Lyovin, Maria Shchekaturova, Evgeny Koryakovsky, Ding Fan, Kirill Kobzarev, Valeria Shkirando
The Moscow subway, like the subways of any country in the world, has more than once become the basis for terrifying urban legends. However, real events can be much scarier than any fiction of those who like to tickle the nerves of themselves and others.
This is to be learned by the passengers of the last of the trains, which flies past the station, dragging the people in it into the frightening unknown. After a few days, the authorities silence the story, but the friends of the missing do not give up hope of finding them.
This movie about caves and survival – the most recent of those in which the actor Kirill Kobzarev managed to star; it was worth completing the production, as he died in a car accident.
Caved In
- IMDB Rating – 3.4
- Genre: Horror, Fantasy, Action, Thriller
- Production: USA, Romania, Canada / 2006
- Budget: $15,000,000
- Director: Richard Pepin
- Starring: Christopher Atkins, Colm Meaney, Angela Featherstone, Monica Dean, David Palffy, Chelan Simmons, Stevie M. Mitchell, Marius Kivu, Christian Popa, Vlad Jipa.
A well-known and extremely experienced speleologist wants to take a break from his work and spend a vacation in the company of his family. For the sake of this, he even goes on the most ordinary tourist trip. But the affairs of his main profile catch up with him even there.
A couple of strange guys offer the specialist a huge sum of money to take them to the caves in the Alps – the former emerald mines; they hope to find the remaining stones there. The speleologist doesn’t even ask his new clients any questions and just does what he has to do. Who knew this trio had a pretty slim chance of coming back?
Despite the relative freshness of the picture, it is very reminiscent of many of its features horror film “Them”, filmed back in 1954.
The Crypt
- IMDB Rating – 3.2
- Genre: Horror
- Production: USA / 2009
- Budget: $1,350,000
- Director: Craig McMahon
- Starring: Sarah Oh, Mike Ranallo, Abra May, Kristen Irene, Joanna Ke, Dylaine Stevens, R. Keith Wilson, Nathan Hill, Michael David Hill, Halliwood Yates
Six brave young men are engaged in an unusual activity. Their job is to search for and explore ancient graves. One day they go underground in one of the cities of the United States of America.
The occasion for another expedition becomes the search for riches that people could hide back during the Great Depression. In the process of searching the archaeologists find a vault unknown to them before and decide to open it: what if there could be something really valuable there too?
Let this movie about dungeons and was filmed for a fairly small amount of money, but the reviews of viewers say that the makeup and skillful pumping up the creepy atmosphere succeeded to the glory.
