Where the $%#@ Did We Park?

Title:  Subterano

Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away:  The female lead in this is Tasma Walton, who  I don’t remember from also being in Safety In Numbers.

Introduction:  I got it on eBay for an undisclosed amount.

Location:  There is a scene in a kid’s bedroom where he’s developed this great new game, then there is a scene at a video game based club (think Hackers), but otherwise, these ninety minutes or so all take place within a parking garage.  You could probably film this movie without anyone even knowing if the security guard was a friend of yours.

Plot:  A group of four dumb kids- two guys, two girls- a cop type guy and his partner (who is female), a woman who works in the building and is quite angry, and Scruffy the Janitor are all trapped inside a giant parking garage which turns into a video game called, you guessed it, subterano, which is sort of but not really explained in the beginning of the movie.   This whole video game come to life plot has been done a thousand times over it seems, from Tron to eXistenZ, but apparently it hadn’t been done in Australia yet.   This movie really is more sci-fi than horror or thriller, so I feel kind of cheated having been lead to believe there’d be anything resembling horror or even the slightest bit thrilling involved.   It’s a tired plot that has been done before and, yes, it will probably be done again.

Acting:  The acting isn’t bad, but it’s not great.   There’s one scene in particular, which has a neat effect, where one of the girls is strung up in a torture rack/spider web looking thing and she keeps screaming over and over again about how she’s going to the mountain.   I would assume that scene was as cool, and then as instantly as embarrassing when she started screaming that, for the directors, cast, crew, and everyone else as it was for me.

Production:  As this movie takes place pretty much in a parking garage, it has the production value as such.  Some scenes aren’t very well lit, but there are a lot of shadows in parking lots, right?  While this movie could have been made in the 1980’s (more on that later) it does come off looking like a “major motion picture”, more or less.

Sex/Nudity:  There is one scene where the woman who works there asks the kids to see their identification and they all pull down their pants and show her their backsides, but otherwise, this movie has none of that.   Most likely that fact is due to this being like a real life video game and it isn’t The Sims or whatever Tracy Jordan invented. 

Special Effects:  As stated before, the graphics in this movie look like they could be from the 1980’s or 1990’s at best.  I find it hard to swallow that this movie was made after the year 2000, but it claims it was.  If this was a 1983 to 1995 era release, then it would have awesome special effects.   Let’s just say that the voice of the video game they’re stuck in is pretty much a rip off of Jigsaw, just that low pitched voice altered sound.

Overall Verdict:  I would only recommend this movie to you If you’ve seen Tron too many times and are looking for something else that’s less good and more like Tron in a parking garage.   I wouldn’t watch it again unless I got really bored because, honestly, twice was enough (I fell asleep through it the first time).