Nine miles down (2009)

An interesting tidbit: This movie was supposed to be directed by John Carpenter back in 1996 but he left the production to make Escape from LA instead, which makes for some pretty interesting thoughts about how the movie would've turned out.

So, is Adrian Paul a good actor? I'm not a big fan of the Highlander tv-series and the last thing I saw him in was the horrible cheesefest Lost colony aka Wraiths of Roanoke, in which I accused him of just doing an "ok" english accent. Hehe. The man was born and raised british. Shame on me. Sorry Adrian. In this flick Mr Paul plays some sort of roaming security guard in the African desert who is dispatched to a drilling site where a group of scientists are performing experiments. They havent been heard from in days and our hero is to find out why. When he arrives at the location he finds it strangely deserted and in one of the rooms remains of some sort of animal sacrifice can be found. Then there's the blood on the walls, writing that says "Save yourselves". The next day he meets what seems to be the only survivor of the scientists, a young woman who shows him the bodies of some of the scientists who supposedly killed themselves. She also plays him the weird sounds that emanates from a huge cavern "nine miles down" which disturbingly sounds like human voices in pain. Our hero starts to see and hear strange things, and becomes very suspicious when he learns that the scientist team is supposed to be all male... but is all this in his mind, or have the scientists managed to open up a gate to some sort of hellish underworld and released evil into the world. You have to watch the film to find out.

Not bad, not bad. Nine miles down starts incredibly well with a great location and a good mystery which unfolds at a perfect pace. The first 40-45 minutes are excellent with just the right amounts of plotrevelations. Adrian Paul does a good job playing the securityofficer "with baggage" and Kate Nauta is ok in the role of the female survivor JC. She does appear a bit young for a doctor with phds but she is pretty sexy and play off well with Adrian Paul, which is lucky for us since the movie is basically about these two characters. Is he crazy or is she a spawn of Satan? The whole thing works well as suspense with a fair number of creepy scenes but unfortunately starts to fall apart somewhat halfway through. The more we learn, the less interesting it gets basically. It all lead to a perfectly decent ending, which on the other hand isnt especially hard to figure out in advance. I think my main dissapointment with this movie is the fact that it took of in a direction that I didnt want it to go, and if you consider that, Nine miles down is a fine little thriller which plays its Is it/Isnt it card well. Good viewing but one can only wonder what John Carpenter could've done with this. And yes, Adrian Paul is a good actor.