We start out with a tunnel being built under a mountain, a train is going to run through it, drastically reducing travel time from point A to point B. The tunnel is half done, and a group of dignitaries rides the first train out to the midpoint, as the company honchos hit them up for more money. But they're attacked by some sort of unseen critters, ripped to shreds! It's actually quite nicely done.
Next, cut to the folks who are going to investigate this mysterious slaughter. They contact the guy who's in charge of engineering the tunnel, and unlike the folks in just about every other crappy B-movie, he's actually an intelligent, helpful person who just wants to get this thing figured out so they can finish the tunnel. So these folks, along with a group of military guys and gals, get in an armored train and go into the tunnels, where they find giant bugs.
What makes this so much better than the average B-movie is that the characters are quite well done: fairly likable, they act in a logical manner and don't spend the whole time fighting with each other. What a startling break with cliché! The atmosphere in the tunnel is also done really well, you get a sense of claustrophobia as they're all trapped with the bugs, walking down hallways with lots of dark corners, etc. They set up an electric fence to keep the bugs at bay, and it's actually fairly believable as the bugs keep testing the fence and the military folks tensely stand by with machine guns at the ready.
Towards the end you get the usual big battle with the head bug; the special effects are cheesy but okay. Overall, this is a decidedly above average low budget affair, one of my favorites. Much better than other higher budget affairs like "Relic".
Next, cut to the folks who are going to investigate this mysterious slaughter. They contact the guy who's in charge of engineering the tunnel, and unlike the folks in just about every other crappy B-movie, he's actually an intelligent, helpful person who just wants to get this thing figured out so they can finish the tunnel. So these folks, along with a group of military guys and gals, get in an armored train and go into the tunnels, where they find giant bugs.
What makes this so much better than the average B-movie is that the characters are quite well done: fairly likable, they act in a logical manner and don't spend the whole time fighting with each other. What a startling break with cliché! The atmosphere in the tunnel is also done really well, you get a sense of claustrophobia as they're all trapped with the bugs, walking down hallways with lots of dark corners, etc. They set up an electric fence to keep the bugs at bay, and it's actually fairly believable as the bugs keep testing the fence and the military folks tensely stand by with machine guns at the ready.
Towards the end you get the usual big battle with the head bug; the special effects are cheesy but okay. Overall, this is a decidedly above average low budget affair, one of my favorites. Much better than other higher budget affairs like "Relic".