Just watched this on Sky Movies - nothing else to do on a Saturday morning ;) I went in to it expecting another flashy slasher pic set in a dark place so was pleasantly surprised to see a different take on a normally standard horror film scenario.
Yes it is another cabin in the woods with another bunch of young beautiful holiday makers on a drug and drink fueled break in the middle of nowhere. Cripes, where's the originality nowadays! Yet, it does work a little bit better than others, it just needed to have a more solid storyline in terms of the cycle.
As the second half kicked in, most people would begin to realize that the things you've seen are things that are about to happen. It reminded me of the absolutely superb 'TRIANGLE' with Melissa George. Sadly, 'Mine Games' is an inferior wannabe.
Inferior only in terms of the storyline and the capability to provide everything 'in the past' to make sense in the present. It's tight but not tight enough to make me say wow; It is however well worked out and everything has its place.
And then I saw the budget - $1.5m - you can hardly make a TV episode on that nowadays so the overall finished product is very good. The directing is pretty good, the acting is as you would expect. The standouts for me were the lighting within the mines themselves and the music is above average for this type of movie.
One thing that really annoyed me though was the character of Rose, I couldn't really put a finger on it save to say that she made no sense whatsoever! I don't understand why she needed to be in the film and the reason for her visions apart from being on drugs is never explained.
I revert back to 'Triangle' again where the ending of the film is a perfect nod to the start of the next sequence but the ending of 'Mine Games' is pretty terrible and in terms of the cycle make no sense. Unless the cycle has been broken but then it wouldn't be a cycle in the first place and how could two people from two different timelines co-exist in the same place? I like films to ask questions and I like to see something different from the usual clobber we get. 'Mine Games' doesn't really stand out and there are far superior films of this niche out there.
However for the budget and the production quality, the filmmakers have done a good job and for a Saturday morning when it's a choice between this and 'Muppets from Space', I'd go for this.
And it isn't the first time I said that... Oh!
Yes it is another cabin in the woods with another bunch of young beautiful holiday makers on a drug and drink fueled break in the middle of nowhere. Cripes, where's the originality nowadays! Yet, it does work a little bit better than others, it just needed to have a more solid storyline in terms of the cycle.
As the second half kicked in, most people would begin to realize that the things you've seen are things that are about to happen. It reminded me of the absolutely superb 'TRIANGLE' with Melissa George. Sadly, 'Mine Games' is an inferior wannabe.
Inferior only in terms of the storyline and the capability to provide everything 'in the past' to make sense in the present. It's tight but not tight enough to make me say wow; It is however well worked out and everything has its place.
And then I saw the budget - $1.5m - you can hardly make a TV episode on that nowadays so the overall finished product is very good. The directing is pretty good, the acting is as you would expect. The standouts for me were the lighting within the mines themselves and the music is above average for this type of movie.
One thing that really annoyed me though was the character of Rose, I couldn't really put a finger on it save to say that she made no sense whatsoever! I don't understand why she needed to be in the film and the reason for her visions apart from being on drugs is never explained.
I revert back to 'Triangle' again where the ending of the film is a perfect nod to the start of the next sequence but the ending of 'Mine Games' is pretty terrible and in terms of the cycle make no sense. Unless the cycle has been broken but then it wouldn't be a cycle in the first place and how could two people from two different timelines co-exist in the same place? I like films to ask questions and I like to see something different from the usual clobber we get. 'Mine Games' doesn't really stand out and there are far superior films of this niche out there.
However for the budget and the production quality, the filmmakers have done a good job and for a Saturday morning when it's a choice between this and 'Muppets from Space', I'd go for this.
And it isn't the first time I said that... Oh!