Review by Keri O’Shea
It’s odd – sometimes when a film itself makes a claim about how ‘original’ it is or how it is somehow ‘redefining genre’, you wonder why you’re hearing it from them, not the fans. Sometimes it even comes across like a kid establishing their version of events first, before you discover the truth of what they did…such is the case with Urban Explorer, which has been going around saying it is a ‘change in formula’ for the slasher genre. Without getting drawn into an argument with myself about whether or not it even is a slasher, I saw little in this film which heralded much ‘change’ of any kind. It’s watchable and it certainly entertained the Abertoir crowd, but it would be easy to dismiss this German horror movie as Das Creep with a dash of Wolf Creek, if you had a mind to do so. Knowing references (or otherwise) aside, then, two things stand out about this movie: the first is that the whole thing was an illegal shoot which took place in the network of subterranean tunnels underneath one of the world’s coolest cities, Berlin. The second is that, Berlin or not, we aren’t presented with the expected Nazi folk devil here, but someone with a, shall we say, rather different political background. That at least is commendable.
The plot is achingly simple: a group of Benetton advertisement-style twentysomethings of a satisfactory array of nationalities meet up (illegally, and late at night) for a tour of the Berlin tunnel network, where they hope to reach a remote World War II bunker and take a look at the hitherto-unknown Nazi artwork painted on the walls there. It all goes a bit Descent as they try to clamber through an array of inhospitable locations – only with the world’s worst guide, as demonstrable from a scene where the camera spends around ten seconds fixed on a colony of bats up in the eaves of one of the tunnels. Finally the camera returns to the guide…who simply declares, ‘Bats’. Okay, thanks for that Captain Obvious, you’re beginning to lose our confidence here. Still, onwards they press, people invariably get wounded and then, as if that wasn’t all bad enough, the ‘help’ they encounter down there is decidedly non-helpful.
I’m trying not to spoiler this film, for those of you that wish to check it out, but it really feels like three films were chopped up and spliced together. It just tries to cover too much material; there’s the survival bit, then there’s the omnipotent bad man bit, and as if the bad man wasn’t bad enough, he’s guilty of more than he at first seems to be. It was almost as if, knowing that it would probably be impossible to revisit the cool location they’d found, the filmmakers wanted to make all the horror movies they could ever conceive of making all in one fell swoop. The result is not badly-shot – if you can tolerate the trendy music video stylings we see so often – but it does feel rushed, and although this could make a fun beer movie, on its own terms it doesn’t work for me. I’d say there were three derivative but watchable movies here, all crammed into the same space at the expense of the pacing and acting of each chapter. The script was not of huge concern here, and neither was characterisation: hell, you don’t have time to invest anything in these people, so when one of the female characters spends far too long sadly intoning the name ‘Dennis’, it comes across as funny.
Some level of tension gets built up during the movie, only it is – if I can go all paradoxical here – boringly tense. Sequences of peril are definitely there, and I can’t knock the direction of some of these, only they laboured under a profound sense of deja-vu, again because so many tropes here are already familiar. It’s hard to really get behind what’s going on if you feel like you’ve already seen it. One thing I will say is truly commendable here, though, is the performance of Klaus Stiglmeier as Armin; he is a scary, striking-looking guy, so if Germany ever wants to put forward its own Ron Perlman I think we’ve found a candidate, and he also really plays his role with relish. When he was on screen, I was twice as engaged by what was going on. He really seemed to be enjoying himself, and that counts for plenty.
So Urban Explorer takes a great location and has a great bad guy, but in trying to crowbar in so much, it scuppers its promise. I probably sound as though I detested this film: I didn’t, but I found it frustrating because it slipped so easily into a vast file of predictable films. It’s a familiar trip, even if in a less familiar city. Still, watching it with a group of people was quite good fun regardless, and if you’re drawn to…well, any of the genres represented here, then you might find something to enjoy.