Death Tunnel (2005)

Sadly Over-hyped

Fantastic!

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Look, let's not dance around the simple fact that this film is the most awful film you could possibly watch. There is not a single part of the film I enjoyed... in fact within the first 16 minutes I wanted to get up and walk away; however unfortunately I made the grave mistake of staying thinking "it can't possibly get worse"... "it must get better" but I was wrong. DO NOT BUY THIS FILM! It's not worth your time never mind your money. So now I'm writing for the sake of it since there needs to be a minimum of 10 lines in the review and quite frankly the film is not worth 10 lines describing how terrible it is. If you were to have a sh*t, then eat this sh*t throw it up, eat it and then sh*t it out again it would be a more pleasant experience than watching this film, I beg you not to get this film, you WILL regret it.

Philip Adrian Booth's 2005 film "Death Tunnel" is a well-made horror flick about five college gals (in lingerie) locked in a huge abandoned sanatorium in Kentucky where 63,000 people died of the "white plague" in the early 20th century. It's supposed to be a college initiation, but things go sour when the ghosts of the plague victims show up! I was surprised to discover that the acting was quite good by all the principles, at least for a Grade B horror flick. I say "surprised" because a few armchair critics diss the film for the supposed bad acting. Yes, there may be some side characters whose acting is questionable, but that's about it. A possible exception would be the girl who plays Ashley (Kristin Novak) and her over-the-top performance during the shower sequence, but this can be defended on the grounds that the script required a low camp approach to pull it off. How else could she deliver such dialog and be effective? She did it the way it had to be done."Death Tunnel" is amazing because of its entertaining style. As far as filmmaking technique goes, this is top-of-the-line all the way. One reviewer properly described it as "extremely impressive visual style combined with top notch kinetic editing work." It's impossible to watch this movie and not be wowed by the filmmaking technique, even if you don't like the story or the way it's told (more on this below). It boggles the mind to think of the time & effort put into creating this film. Such attention to detail and professionalism is rare, particularly in low-budget independent fare.In addition to the filmmaking technique, the locations, cast and score/soundtrack are superb. The film was largely shot at Waverly Hills Sanatorium near Louisville, KY, which is a perfect location for a horror flick. The film also features numerous ultra-gorgeous women, including the ones trying in vain to get out of the sanatorium (e.g. Novak as Ashley, Melanie Lewis as Devon and Yolanda Pecoraro as Elizabeth), a couple of the ghosts and even more. It's Grade A on this front. There's also a genuine aura of creepiness and a few good scares. Plus the modern metal song "Disconnected" by 9 Volt Revolt is excellent (featured in both the story and the end credits) counterbalanced by the haunting score by Christopher Saint Booth.All this gels together for a massively amusing work of celluloid.There's only one problem and that's the way the story is told, which explains my mediocre rating the first time I viewed "Death Tunnel," not to mention the general negative reviews. The simple plot is presented in a very convoluted manner, mostly in the first act. There are so many flashbacks, flashforwards and flashbetweens it gets confusing and tempts the viewer to tune out during the first half hour. Moreover, there's almost zero build-up of suspense due to the flashforwarding and the fact that the girls are shown whining in terror from their outset in the sanatorium. Thankfully, the story settles down in the second and third acts where it focuses on the five girls trying to get out of the sanatorium.I suspect the Booth brothers took this non-linear approach in the first act to disorient the viewer right out of the gate. If so, it works. But this is oft-putting to most people on their initial viewing because the movie requires you to concentrate in order for it to pull you in. I suggest re-watching the film, kick back, and just let it give you a good time. I did and it did. The story comes together as you are captivated by the movie magic.A more linear approach to the storytelling would probably have made "Death Tunnel" more compelling, but after re-watching the film it dawned on me that Booth was shooting for art and originality above horror conventions, which should be respected. Besides, I was able to enter into the world of the movie and was mesmerized. What more could you ask for in an independent horror flick? The fact that "Death Tunnel" is an artistic horror film rather than a conventional slasher flick explains the mass of negative reviews, but anyone who appreciates cinematic art will value this film. You just have to be in the right mode.Like many others, I didn't like the film the first time I watched it, although I was entertained by the spectacular visuals, which includes the stunning women, as well as the score/soundtrack. I decided to give it another chance with an open mind and found myself fabulously entertained; same thing with my third and fourth viewing. By the mid-point I found myself almost spellbound by the movie magic, which held me to the climax. You just have to accept that this isn't a dialogue-driven, plot-driven movie that focuses on slowly building suspense. Instead it's 90 minutes of horror and the entertaining elements thereof FROM THE GET-GO, which some people understandably can't appreciate. If you didn't like the movie on your first viewing I encourage you to give it a re-watch sometime with these things in mind. You might like it. FINAL WORD: "Death Tunnel" successfully combines grisly locations & F/X with stunningly beautiful women and a kinetic style for an amazingly entertaining film. What's more, the ending is actually moving -- there is a light at the end of the death tunnel."Death Tunnel" has slowly become one of my favorite horror films. It runs 97 minutes.GRADE: B+

Death Tunnel is set in Kentucky where the notorious Vangard Sanatorium has been closed for years, during the early part of the twentieth century tens of thousands of people died there from an incurable disease known as the 'White Plague' & the countless bodies were secretly taken from the sanatorium by a train through a tunnel under it which has since become known as the 'Death Tunnel'. High school medical student Heather Reed (Steffany Huckaby) is invited to the annual 'Truth or Scare' initiation party & decides to go, during the party five girls are chosen to spend the night in the old creepy supposedly haunted Vangard Sanatorium & Heather is one of them. While Richie (Jason Lasater) looks on using hidden cameras the five girls find themselves stuck in the rundown sanatorium but they are not alone as it becomes clear that there is a supernatural presence & past horrors come back to haunt the present...Edited, photographed, co-written & directed by Philip Adrian Booth this is yet another really bad low budget indie horror film that is a total bore from start to finish, makes no sense, is annoying to watch & has little or no entertainment value. The first thing I noticed about Death Tunnel that annoyed me was the broken narrative, for some strange reason Booth has decided to place sequences out of order so within the first twenty minutes there are dream sequences, flashbacks, flash-forwards, montages & a complete lack of linear structure which would be alright if he was building up to some twists but there aren't any. It just seemed to me Booth was jumbling up the logical order of the plot to try & be clever but it fails, badly. I mean as an example the first thing that actually happens in Death Tunnel is a blonde girl stabbing someone else to death with a shard of glass which then isn't referred to again until it actually happens again latter in the film at the point it should have, the flashbacks, dreams & flash-forwards just didn't make any narrative sense to me & it carries on throughout the rest of the film. There are numerous instances of people doing idiotic things, why doesn't Richie remember the fire escape at the end in order to get out? Why does Ashley suddenly decide to take a shower in a rundown, decrepit old mental hospital? Even though I get the idea that the initial of each of the girls names spells out Death (Devon, Elizabeth, Ashley, Tori & Heather) what does that have to do with anything? Why did that ghost paint their initials on their clothes? Was no-one else meant to check on them? Did Richie not have a mobile phone? Who set all the camera equipment up? Why was it so hard to just walk out of the bloody place? The character's are poor, the plot has momentum & features endless shots of dark corridors & people wandering around in order to stretch the running time out & the plot is near incomprehensible. At an hour & a half Death Tunnel is far too long & there are better films out there.Death Tunnel can't even provide any gore to liven things up, there are a few dead bodies & a little bit of blood splatter but all the kills are off screen & really tame. Death Tunnel looks like one long music video with the constant jumpy editing, shaky camera, the fact that no shot seems to last longer than five seconds & all the black and white montages, the lame attempts at ghostly patients & doctor's & a silly overdone soundtrack full of whizzing & flashbulb type effects to go with the machine-gun editing. Death Tunnel is a real irritant to watch & even think about. There's one scene of gratuitous nudity which is appreciated but hardly compensates for the rest of the film being pretty terrible.With a supposed budget of about a million bucks this was at least partly filmed at the real-life Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Kentucky. The film looks alright in terms of on set footage I suppose but the editing ruins it & it just becomes an eyesore. The acting is bad, simple as that.Death Tunnel is a bit of a painful experience to sit through, the constant pointless changes in narrative & time-line annoyed me & serve no purpose that I could see. The lack of gore, the lack of any coherent or logical story & a low body count don't help it.

Wow. Wow. I wish that I was a poet so that I could adequately find the words to describe just how awful this movie is. Nay, I cannot even call this a 'movie'; movies have stories and plots, even the bad ones do. It is rare that I will not watch a movie through to the end, regardless of how bad it is. But Death Tunnel was not even worth more than 25 minutes of my time.This was not even a movie; it was a random, mish mash of sometimes extremely quick and sometimes sort of long scenes, with no coherency. I am serious.1) The movie jumps around from 4 different time-lines, with some jumps being as quick as 3 seconds to as long as 5 minutes. 2) There are scenes and/or images that are just randomly inserted with no introduction or explanation as to why the scenes are there. 3) There were many scenes in which I had no idea whose Point of View the scene was supposed to be from. Some scenes appeared to be intended strictly from the audience's POV, which makes no sense in movie making, since the audience is not actually IN the movie. But there was no other explanation for why the scenes were shown.And this was only in the first 25 minutes!! I kept asking aloud, "What is going on? What was that about? Whose POV is that supposed to be? What was the point of that?" This was NOT a movie; it was merely a haphazard collection of scenes that *overall* followed some vague story about teenage girls that went to the bar and ended up in an abandoned hospital.2 Minute scene of teenage girls in a bar. Sudden images of a hospital gurney. A girl locked in a dirty, hospital room. She takes a sack off of her head. A 2 second image of 2 topless women walking down a hall. A 10 second video of teenage girls outside college. Sudden images of old video footage of people in a hospital. 1 minute scene of teenage girls in a contest at a bar. A 1 minute scene of a teenage boy watching video monitors and....something happens. Followed by static footage of random building images. 3 minute scene of a teenage girl walking through a filthy hallway. and so on.Horrible, horrible, horrible. I saw no point in even watching any more. And now I am out of $5, which I could have spent on candy. At least I would have gotten more enjoyment out of candy, and it would have lasted longer.