These monsters have more going for them than what lies on the surface.
The Big Picture
- In 2005’s action horror
The Cave
, blood-thirsty creatures trap divers in an underwater cave, leading to a fight for survival. - The creatures in
The Cave
are based on ancient legends, combining science and supernatural elements. - Although the monsters themselves aren’t the most original looking in the genre, they take from a tried-and-true horror formula and attempt to make something original out of it.
It’s not often that you find yourself trapped miles beneath the earth with 12 days’ worth of supplies and no way out, all while being chased by winged creatures that love to swim, but if that’s you, then you’re probably a character in The Cave. This 2005 horror flick recently found its way to Netflix, where it’s gotten a new lease on life after years underground. Directed by first-time director (and longtime second unit director) Bruce Hunt in his only directorial feature, this picture assembled a unique band of actors for a spelunking adventure gone horribly wrong. Like, as bad as any cave-diving expedition beneath a cursed church in Romania could. But what makes The Cave unique isn’t the caverns themselves, but rather the creatures that inhabit this world — and what standard horror monsters they might represent.
The Cave
Blood-thirsty creatures await a pack of divers who become trapped in an underwater cave network.
- Release Date
- August 26, 2005
- Director
- Bruce Hunt
- Cast
- Cole Hauser , Eddie Cibrian , Morris Chestnut , Lena Headey , Piper Perabo , Rick Ravanello
- Runtime
- 97
- Writers
- Michael Steinberg , Tegan West
- Main Genre
- Action
What Is ‘The Cave’ About?
Despite the 2005 setting, The Cave begins about 30 years prior when a group of delinquent Soviet and British agents plan to plunder a 13th-century Romanian abbey of its supposed hidden riches, only to find themselves trapped within, and with no way out. Beneath the Carpathian Mountains, no one can hear you scream, but if you find yourself down there, you might hear something else’s screams (or, chirps rather). The film then flashes forward to the 21st century, where a group of cave divers, led by Cole Hauser‘s Jack McAllister, is hired by Dr. Nicolai (Marcel Iureș) to assist him in chronicling, exploring, and potentially plundering the cave. For scientific purposes, of course.
Jack is joined by his brother, Tyler (Invasion‘s Eddie Cibrian), Top Buchanan (Morris Chestnut), rock-climber Charlie (Piper Perabo), loose-canon Briggs (Rick Ravanello), and sonar guru Strode (Kieran Darcy-Smith). Dr. Nicolai also brings his associate, Dr. Kathryn Jennings (Lena Headey), and their cameraman Alex Kim (Daniel Dae Kim) to the party. Things go smoothly for all of about five minutes before Strode is killed by an unknown assailant while fixing some fiber cable, resulting in his water scooter crashing into a rock face and exploding, resulting in a rockslide that traps them inside with no easy way out. Led by Jack, the team ventures further in, as they slowly discover that they are being watched, stalked, and eventually picked off one by one. Jack himself is attacked at one point but survives. Though, he’s never the same.
After most of their group is killed by the creatures, Jack, Tyler, Kathryn, Top, and Alex make it to the end of the line. There, they’ve concluded that the creatures are a form of parasites, and they’ve lured them into their “killing floor.” Jack makes a sacrifice play to keep his brother safe, and Alex dies running from one of the monsters, but Tyler, Kathryn, and Top manage to make it out alive. But that might not be as good a thing as we might have hoped. The Cave ultimately ends with the knowledge that the parasite has made it out, and Tyler is left alone in Romania after he tries to track its host down, but to no avail. And so the cycle continues.
There Might Be More to ‘The Cave’s Inhabitants Than We Think
Like all the best monsters in cinema, what makes the parasitic creatures in The Cave particularly interesting is the lore we discover about them. According to Dr. Nicolai, there’s an old European legend concerning a group of men who built a church on top of the Carpathian Mountain cave mouth to keep an ancient evil inside. While these creatures aren’t the first monsters to come out of Romania (Dracula, where you at?), they’re some of the more interesting to look at within a modern context. Much like modern vampire lore tugs between supernatural/spiritual origins and scientific ones (virus-based vampires are becoming all the rage), so too do The Cave‘s antagonists riff on a usually supernaturally charged monster: demons.
It’s easy to dismiss what Dr. Nicolai recounts as pure legend and religious paranoia. In fact, that even seems likely given the “unenlightened” minds of 13th-century Romanians. But the way The Cave frames its monsters (and goes on to later explain them), there might be a deeper, more enchanted truth to them than initially meets the skeptical eye. It’s important to note that it wasn’t until after the old church was disturbed, and the seal broken, that these creatures came out of the woodwork and became a potential threat. Beforehand, the seemingly Christian peasants who built the hallowed halls had seemingly succeeded in rooting out the evil from their midst. They, and the nearby inhabitants, were saved. In a sense, they truly did keep the world from this demonic virus, only these demons are so much more than the usual characters you’d encounter in The Exorcist or The Conjuring.
These creatures spread like wildfire, and as Lena Headey’s Kathryn discovers, they aren’t actually “creatures” at all: they were once men. No, this isn’t something spiritual like the human kings who were turned into Nazgûl in The Lord of the Rings, rather, a virus mutated the British and Soviet men trapped in the caverns for decades, transforming them into something more hideous than your normal on-screen demons. Not unlike how the evil spirits move from host to host and transform them both physically and mentally into possessed individuals, so too do the parasites of The Cave transform and corrupt their host, until they eventually crave something as forbidden as human flesh.
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Jack Fights His Transformation in ‘The Cave’
As Jack gets infected fairly early on in the narrative, he slowly begins to change in many of the same ways a demon-possessed person might. His eyes change, giving off an unnatural look and feeling, and he begins to hear things he shouldn’t. In this case, he hears the voices of others far away, as opposed to the usual whispers of demonic spirits. One might consider the parasites of The Cave the secular answer to demons and demon possession, and it’s a novel idea that the film runs with in strides. As Jack privately battles his inner demons, now enhanced by whatever microcosm has invaded his nervous system, he becomes increasingly erratic, hostile, and single-minded, hoping to do one last good deed before he succumbs to the evil he’s fighting within.
The monsters themselves take a long time to transform, and even then they leave small “tells” echoing back to who they once were. Tattoos are the most common here, but Jack never finds out what his might be. He refuses to give in to the evil desires creeping beneath his skin and chooses instead to go out a hero. It’s both admirable and heartbreaking as his brother, Tyler, cannot save him, but from the moment we learn that Jack is infected, there doesn’t seem to be much hope. Unlike the inherently spiritual demons of biblical lore, the name of Jesus Christ won’t cast this biological devil out. Once one is infected, the parasite stays. There might be hope, one day, of a scientific answer to this evil force of nature, but the way The Cave ends, we have little hope or clue of how to even come about it — especially since the virus succeeds in getting out.
To further add to the parallels between the religious demons of horror literature and these creatures from The Cave, the final battle sequence takes place in a sacrificial chamber that looks like something out of the literal picture of hell. Hell is often described as a fiery, dark, and monstrous place that exists within the earth, with fallen angels bound there in chains until judgment. While the creatures in the film were once human, there is something to the idea that they’re bound there with no potential for escape, unless someone were to unwittingly let them out. The hellish landscape makes for a great finish to this otherwise dark and wet feature, and it only makes sense that The Cave would descend from a church above into the depths of the earth until they finally reach the underworld itself.
‘The Cave’s Ending Leaves the Fate of Our World In the Balance
It turns out that the 13th-century Romanians had it right. Their Christian faith had prepared them for a potential apocalyptic event, and knowing what lay beneath them, they chose to seal it in until the day of judgment. From what we see in The Cave, it seems as if that day had finally arrived. There’s no telling what this virus could do when it’s unleashed into the world, but we know from how the creatures in the film basically let our heroes go, that the parasite wants to be free to find out. The movie concludes with a sinister finish that leaves the door open for more, though more never came. This sort of open-ended ending feels akin to 2017’s Life, despite that sci-fi horror hitting theaters a decade later.
Although the film has a strong cast of actors best known for their television roles — Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, V, Game of Thrones, Hawai’i Five-0, Covert Affairs, and Yellowstone are all represented here —The Cave didn’t do so hot with audiences or critics. Sadly, when three cave-based movies are released the same year (The Descent and The Cavern being the other two), that’s kind of a tough break. More than that, it’s a real shame that The Cave was slept on during its initial release. This film is a bit deeper than folks give it credit for, with solid performances and some interesting subtext that you just have to be willing to venture further in to uncover. No, the monsters themselves aren’t the most original looking out there, but they take from a tried-and-true horror formula and attempt to make something original out of it, and in a genre that can often feel overplayed, that makes an impact.
The Cave is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
This article was originally published on collider.com