Abandoned Mine Movie Review

Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Date: August 15, 2013
Rating: PG-13
Director: Jeff Chamberlain


Sharon and her friends are ready for their next Halloween party. I really only bothered to learn her name because all of the characters are pretty one dimensional. There's a guy studying medicine who doesn't seem to know anything about medicine, a stereotypical football player, Sharon's best friend and roommate, plus a random Indian guy named Ethan. They decide that instead of spending Halloween at yet another party, they'll head into a haunted abandoned mine.


Naturally, the mine is actually haunted and not just some weird joke or urban legend passed around town. They head deeper into the mine, and someone cuts their rope, leaving them stranded inside. Since they didn't tell anyone where they were going, they have to go even deeper into the mine in hopes of finding a way out. They don't realize that someone wants them all dead until they start getting separated one by one.


Despite a runtime of just 95 minutes, Abandoned Mine feels like a much longer movie. It's like the director decided that he needed to add more to the movie, so he went back in and shot stuff that just doesn't fit. Sharon and her roommate go through an endless montage that involves them dressing up in different costumes, looking in the mirror, and dancing around the room. This seriously takes up at least three minutes of the movie. They then decide on costumes, we see them getting ready in the mirror, and then the movie picks up with them in completely different costumes. What the heck? We literally just saw them getting ready in different outfits!


While I wasn't a huge fan of the movie, I did enjoy the little twist that comes later in the film. There are actually two twists towards the end. I don't want to ruin it for anyone, but we learn that the ghosts might not actually exist and that it might be a human messing with them, only to find out that maybe the ghosts really do exist after all. I realize that doesn't make sense if you haven't seen the movie, but it's hard to explain the twist without ruining anything.


Abandoned Mine served as a nice distraction for an hour and a half, but I don't think I would sit down and watch it again. I've read reviews that call it a modern example of a classic horror flick. I wouldn't go that far either. There was just something about the movie that seemed lacking to me. It had an interesting premise, but there are much better films about haunted mines and people trapped in tight confines.