Not only is this the worst horror film I've seen, its one of the worst films, period. The majority of the film is an abysmal assault on the senses, but the ugly, repugnant ending is what really seals the deal.
This is a "special" kind of movie in its badness. Its not so bad its good. Its not so bad it can be riffed on (seriously, try it and you'll be hard pressed to find anything to make fun of). Like other reviewers have stated, its just plain unwatchable. I seriously question the mental well-being of anyone who found The Cavern legitimately entertaining.
Let's start with the filmmaking and script, which are astonishingly poor. The film is set in Kazakhstan, even though its referred to as Russia in the movie itself and on the IMDb plot summary. I didn't know the Kazakhstani wilderness looked so much like the California desert. The characters are all bland and uninteresting, so we have no reason to care about them. Why would one of the characters go caving on the anniversary of the death of a loved one's death as a result of a caving accident? The lighting is just terrible; all the scenes in the cave are lit only with headlamps. This wouldn't be so bad if we could tell what's going on, but none of the light reflects off the cave walls since its always shining directly into the camera. The epileptic flash photography sequences don't help, either. This makes for a very disorienting experience. My best guess is they were attempting to recreate The Descent, a cave film that also used no studio lighting. Here's the difference: The Descent was made by competent filmmakers who knew how to utilize the low light levels to create suspense while still showing the audience what was going on. The blinding headlamps coupled with the frantic editing in The Cavern make the narrative almost incomprehensible. There were a couple dumb moments I was able to pick out, though. One of the characters suggests they douse their headlamps so the creature won't see them. That would do literally nothing since cave-dwelling animals are typically blind and rely entirely on their other senses. Another character suggests they split up. It may be a horror cliche, but splitting up is one of the worst things you can do in a situation like that!
So far the movie has been really bad. But the ending? You ain't seen nothing yet!
In the final scene, the two surviving girls wake up naked by an obviously fake CGI fire in the cave, wrapped in animal fur blankets. They find a picture from 1980 of what looks like a 10-year-old boy. Rather hilariously, they eat some cooked meat only to find its the charred remains of one of their friends. A caveman with a burnt face is revealed to be the attacker. In a confusing flashback, its revealed that the boy in the picture survived a plane crash and decided to become a caveman. How has this boy (who I assume had no survival experience at the time) survive more than a week? This raises so many more questions like how does a normal human move giant rocks by himself, see in the dark, and survive gunshots? The creatures in The Descent had abilities and weaknesses within reason, and the fact they evolved in caves was a believable excuse as to why they were so good at moving in the dark. The fact the monster is a normal human is absolutely stupid.
But wait, it gets worse...
Up to this point the film has been insultingly stupid and incompetent, but the last 20 seconds is where it goes from abysmal to morally reprehensible. The last 20 seconds is a blast of badly edited shaky cam and screaming. I had no idea what was happening, and I assumed he killed them. Then I looked up the plot summary on Wikipedia and it turns out that he killed one and raped the other. I went back through that final scene frame by frame and could (vaguely) make out that that was indeed what was happening.
Here's the problem: you can't end your movie mid-rape! Not only does it make for a deplorable, dissatisfying experience that leaves a sour taste in the viewer's mouth, but it simply doesn't work artistically. What do most movies have the The Cavern doesn't? The answer is elevation. I have no problem with unhappy or unsatisfying endings. Films like Se7en, John Carpenter's The Thing, Funny Games, and even The Descent may not have happy endings, but they all serve an artistic purpose and give the audience something to think about. The ending of The Cavern makes me think if a rape victim saw this, the last thing they'd see before the credits is a reminder of what is most likely the most traumatizing experience of their lives with no light at the end of the (both physical and metaphorical) tunnel. I have no problem with the inclusion of a rape scene as long as there's a point. Honestly, the fact that the rape scene is the ending is what bothers me so much. I wouldn't be so mad if there was more after the rape. If, for example, the scene suddenly cut to black and was followed by a sequence of killing the beast and finding a way out, it wouldn't be the greatest thing ever but it would have at least given this dumpster fire some kind of elevating resolution. Some connection between the main characters entering the cave (which looks vaguely like a vagina) and two of the characters having consensual sex early on in the film with a dweller of the cave having non-consensual sex may be intended, but you can't just end a movie there!
I rarely ever give a movie a 0 because to do so implies I can't understand how anyone could get anything positive out of the experience. However, The Cavern really is THAT BAD to me.
This is a "special" kind of movie in its badness. Its not so bad its good. Its not so bad it can be riffed on (seriously, try it and you'll be hard pressed to find anything to make fun of). Like other reviewers have stated, its just plain unwatchable. I seriously question the mental well-being of anyone who found The Cavern legitimately entertaining.
Let's start with the filmmaking and script, which are astonishingly poor. The film is set in Kazakhstan, even though its referred to as Russia in the movie itself and on the IMDb plot summary. I didn't know the Kazakhstani wilderness looked so much like the California desert. The characters are all bland and uninteresting, so we have no reason to care about them. Why would one of the characters go caving on the anniversary of the death of a loved one's death as a result of a caving accident? The lighting is just terrible; all the scenes in the cave are lit only with headlamps. This wouldn't be so bad if we could tell what's going on, but none of the light reflects off the cave walls since its always shining directly into the camera. The epileptic flash photography sequences don't help, either. This makes for a very disorienting experience. My best guess is they were attempting to recreate The Descent, a cave film that also used no studio lighting. Here's the difference: The Descent was made by competent filmmakers who knew how to utilize the low light levels to create suspense while still showing the audience what was going on. The blinding headlamps coupled with the frantic editing in The Cavern make the narrative almost incomprehensible. There were a couple dumb moments I was able to pick out, though. One of the characters suggests they douse their headlamps so the creature won't see them. That would do literally nothing since cave-dwelling animals are typically blind and rely entirely on their other senses. Another character suggests they split up. It may be a horror cliche, but splitting up is one of the worst things you can do in a situation like that!
So far the movie has been really bad. But the ending? You ain't seen nothing yet!
In the final scene, the two surviving girls wake up naked by an obviously fake CGI fire in the cave, wrapped in animal fur blankets. They find a picture from 1980 of what looks like a 10-year-old boy. Rather hilariously, they eat some cooked meat only to find its the charred remains of one of their friends. A caveman with a burnt face is revealed to be the attacker. In a confusing flashback, its revealed that the boy in the picture survived a plane crash and decided to become a caveman. How has this boy (who I assume had no survival experience at the time) survive more than a week? This raises so many more questions like how does a normal human move giant rocks by himself, see in the dark, and survive gunshots? The creatures in The Descent had abilities and weaknesses within reason, and the fact they evolved in caves was a believable excuse as to why they were so good at moving in the dark. The fact the monster is a normal human is absolutely stupid.
But wait, it gets worse...
Up to this point the film has been insultingly stupid and incompetent, but the last 20 seconds is where it goes from abysmal to morally reprehensible. The last 20 seconds is a blast of badly edited shaky cam and screaming. I had no idea what was happening, and I assumed he killed them. Then I looked up the plot summary on Wikipedia and it turns out that he killed one and raped the other. I went back through that final scene frame by frame and could (vaguely) make out that that was indeed what was happening.
Here's the problem: you can't end your movie mid-rape! Not only does it make for a deplorable, dissatisfying experience that leaves a sour taste in the viewer's mouth, but it simply doesn't work artistically. What do most movies have the The Cavern doesn't? The answer is elevation. I have no problem with unhappy or unsatisfying endings. Films like Se7en, John Carpenter's The Thing, Funny Games, and even The Descent may not have happy endings, but they all serve an artistic purpose and give the audience something to think about. The ending of The Cavern makes me think if a rape victim saw this, the last thing they'd see before the credits is a reminder of what is most likely the most traumatizing experience of their lives with no light at the end of the (both physical and metaphorical) tunnel. I have no problem with the inclusion of a rape scene as long as there's a point. Honestly, the fact that the rape scene is the ending is what bothers me so much. I wouldn't be so mad if there was more after the rape. If, for example, the scene suddenly cut to black and was followed by a sequence of killing the beast and finding a way out, it wouldn't be the greatest thing ever but it would have at least given this dumpster fire some kind of elevating resolution. Some connection between the main characters entering the cave (which looks vaguely like a vagina) and two of the characters having consensual sex early on in the film with a dweller of the cave having non-consensual sex may be intended, but you can't just end a movie there!
I rarely ever give a movie a 0 because to do so implies I can't understand how anyone could get anything positive out of the experience. However, The Cavern really is THAT BAD to me.