Catacombs (2007)

Another case of cinematic rolling pin action where a half hour concept is spread, or more accurately flattened, into an hour and half long feature. Despite a promising premise, the story quickly degrades into about an hour of shrill screaming by our featured anti-heroine, Victoria, as she freaks out under Paris. Allegedly no one can hear you scream in the catacombs, however, the acoustics are no match for Vickie's stridency. She sounds as if she's plugged into a Marshall set on eleven with the crappy rave soundtrack jacked into channel two as accompaniment. In fairness to star Shannyn Sossamon, she throws her skinny self around with some fat charismatic scene chewing, attempting to lend some heft to the lightweight screenplay, which when having the " hysterical girl runs screaming in catacombs " parts removed, will likely only leave about seven pages of actual dialog. Maybe the heavy yelling is suggestive filler for the anticipated silence of the audience. Nonetheless, Sossamon's performance, even in the face of limited material, ups the rating several notches and I thought Pink did a decent job in her cross over work. The rest of the cast is presented as anonymous and annoying French folks who have nothing better to do than spend their excessive free time playing pranks thus proving that they're just bored socialists who get all their stuff for free. The suspense story is undermined by the spoiler announcement which is broadcast in the opening scene in order that you don't suffer from over excitement. The seemingly implausible plot twists at the conclusion hardly seem worth the wait in this catacomb catatonia.

The catacombs of Paris, a lesser known historical marvel of how Paris' over populated cemeteries were cleaned out and 7,000,000 human skeletons were arranged in a macabre maze underground! So in 2007 when I heard it was the setting for a new horror movie I just had to see it! There's no cheap CGI, it's filmed on location.Victoria flies from Boston to Paris to visit her sister, a drugged out drunk party girl. It's the role Pink was born to play.Pink takes Victoria to a rock concert in the catacombs. And by "concert" I mean an orgy of drugs and alcohol. Predictably Victoria gets lost and chased by a goat headed monster said to haunt the catacombs. This goes on for 80 minutes and it's more boring than words can describe.At least the ending is a good one. SPOILER WARNING!!! Eventually Victoria kills one of her pursuers only to discover this was all a prank by Pink and her friends. Ha ha ha. What it's a joke is that Victoria really did kill one of the friends out of fear. As Pink is cursing her Victoria beats all of them to death! Amen. They all deserved it for the hell they put her and the audience through.Can't really think of single reason to see this film as they don't make use of the on location filming in the catacombs. Come on! 7,000,000 human skeletons and they couldn't come up with anything scary?

I've seen a lot of poor horror films in recent years but nothing prepared me for the mess that is CATACOMBS. Shot on the cheap in Romania by an American crew, and made with a list of unknown, amateur actors, boasting the appearance of pop star Pink in her first acting role, I have to say I wasn't expecting much. Then again, I knew the film was set in the Paris catacombs, and such places are undoubtedly good for atmosphere even if the film itself is lacking (I'm thinking the '80s Italian flick SPECTERS). Sadly, CATACOMBS wastes its setting from the start, never generating one iota of interest or intelligence from a stupid premise, and consisting of little more than a woman running around in tunnels armed with a torch, BLAIR WITCH-style.The story is particularly stupid, so bad that you wonder who on earth would greenlight a plot such as this. It goes nowhere and is riddled with holes and inadequacies. Characters behave stupidly and change motivation as the script demands and nothing at all makes sense. The worst part, though, is the twist ending, which falls flat after becoming completely laughable. The acting is poor and the direction worse. Sossamon is bland as the supposedly empathetic lead and Pink is repellent in her acting debut. There's no gore here, no action either, and the only horror comes from a two-minute flashback sequence detailing the birth of a demon child to a pair of Satanists. This flashback, with its jagged editing and extremely repulsive imagery seemed out of place in CATACOMBS. I didn't care for it at all, but at least it was something: something the rest of the entire film is lacking. What a mess.

Another prime example of what could have been an effective twenty-minute short getting the full 88-minute treatment and suffering for it. A girl is terrified by a scary prank and reacts by killing those responsible. There you go, that's the whole plot in a nutshell. Now imagine it rattling around inside an great big 88-minute nutshell, and you have 'Catacombs'. There's just not enough story to go the distance, so basically the majority of the movie is spent watching the increasingly-distraught heroine running up and down many, many gloomy corridors and stumbling through several half-lit service-rooms until you just can't take it any more and the fast forward button begins to earn its keep. The entire mid-section of 'Catacombs' was like being trapped in a video-game, desperately trying every last nook and cranny in an attempt to finally exit the level. Given the genuinely dangerous and life-threatening chills and spills of the girl's ordeal, the movie's 'it was all a prank' ending was highly improbable, to make a polite understatement. All up, 'Catacombs' was a waste of time, money and effort. You're better off with a cup of tea and a good book. In closing, while the movie was pretty bad, it must be said that Pink (or Alecia Moore, as she was born) wasn't. It wasn't much of a role (more of a beefed-up cameo, really) but despite the extreme opinions of some reviewers here, Pink actually did okay. She was at least as good as ever I've seen Sharon Stone...