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| Centipede! [2004] - review by Alex |
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Director: Gregory Gieras
One thing I can give this movie is that it still insisted on using rubber puppets rather than going the CGI root. Which pretty much turns it from a made for Sci-fi channel movie to a z-grade drive-in remake, but I can still give credit when due.
The movie starts off with a couple in India digging at some site. They decide to go down into the caves, where alas, they get eaten by something. Then we switch to some rich boys who are bored of life and hope to have one last adventure before the one gets married in hopes of dying before he has to walk down the aisle.
They meet up with some friends, one being an ex-girlfriend and others just being various stereotypes including a very awkward member of the A/V club. This semi-nerd does provide a elements to the story since he gives everyone personal trackers, which while being small and portable, require this huge archaic monitoring device that looks like some old chemistry lab piece.
After heading out, they arrive at a cave and meet their tour guide, a fine indian fellow. The soon-to-be-married guy and his ex have a race down a deep cavern to increase the movie's tension, and then everyone has a drunken party at the bottom. This leads to two events. One a bit more unpleasant than the other. First the lesser of the two: the nerdy guy meets a bloody end and is torn up, then detonates dynomite on himself and seals everyone inside the cave. The worse of the two involves the rest of the people chanting 'Do the Dance!', and the ex-girlfriend has a seizure while you slowly die a little inside.
But now they are trapped in, and not only is their tour guide scared of heights, but the centipede is on the prowl and even has a large nest of babies. The babies are all lying around in a giant web, and while I'm not sure centipedes spin any sort of web, that's far from the most unrealistic aspect.
One by one, the group is whittled down to a few as the centipede chews them up. They manage to cut it in half at one point, but that just makes it twice as dangerous. Since it ate the nerdy guy, they can use the personal tracker to find out where it's going at all times.
Meanwhile, the Indian government is tracking down the lost couple from the beginning of the movie and have hired slave labor to dig randomly in hopes of burrowing into the cave where survivors may be. This sort of plays a role in the plot, but the survivors trapped below have to do the dirty work of killing large bugs and finding the long lost escape routes.
Aside from the squeaky voiced ex-girlfriend and all the needless tension that creates, the movie wasn't too bad. The centipede was well contructed and as said earlier, didn't take the easy route. If they lost the 'Do the Dance' scene, life would be a lot more pleasant.
Tags: Monsters
Sci-fi
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