The Tunnel – Blazing Minds Film Review

Ok folks you know my opinion of films that are of the “hand-held camera” style, so when The Tunnel dropped through my letter box the other day, I wasn’t overly sure about it, specially after the last time I saw a film in that genre, The Chernobyl Diaries!

The Tunnel is a new Australian “found-footage” movie that from the trailers does look quite terrifying and jumpy, so hopefully it would bring back a little faith to me in these genres of movies, I wasn’t holding my breath, but there’s always a first time to surprise me.

I was fascinated to learn that The Tunnel is part of what is called the 135K Project, a crowd-funding initiative that invites film fans to buy individual digital frames from films to help fund the costs of production, something new to me. The aim of the 135K films is to make films that are not held up by box office constraints.

For me the 135k Project is something that we need more of these days, what with Hollywood just doing sequels, prequels and reboots these days.

The Tunnel – Cert 15 – 90 mins

Directed by Carlo Ledesma (The Last One, Locked, The Haircut) and produced by Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey and starring Bel Delia, Andy Rodoeda, Steve Davis and Luke Arnold, The Tunnel follows the terrifying ordeal of survivors of The Tunnel, a rather claustrophobic run of subway tunnels.

In 2007 in New South Wales the government suddenly abandoned a project to recycle water found in the disused train tunnels beneath Sydney, even though there was serious drought at the time.

A year later journalist (Natasha (Bel Delia) is convinced that the government is covering something up and she wants to prove her theory by any way she can. So she takes her team Peter (Andy Rodereda), Steve (Steve Davies) and Jim (Luke Arnaldo) in to the depths of the subterranean labyrinth of the city, but as they go deeper hunting for a story, something is hunting them!

The Tunnel – Blazing Minds Film Review

The film starts off with an emergency call transcribed to the screen, which does sound terrifying, then we go straight in to the credits with a collection of old photos of the tunnel systems, giving you a rough idea of how big they actually are.

Interview with Trevor who lived in the tunnels but the experience has traumatized him

Once The Tunnel starts it goes in to what can only be described as documentary style, with interviews with the news team that went down in to The Tunnel, telling you their story with the aid of the “found-footage”. This is all quite slow to start, but it does build up the relationship of the characters, so you get know who is who and who does what.

It does take a while for the film to get from this slow start to the point of The Tunnel itself, but once there the entrance in is nicely shot and lit, with the 5.1 sound slowly starting to build to give you an idea of how foreboding the place actually is.

The Tunnel Graffiti

So off they go in to The Tunnel to find out what is in there, for a little while not much happens, until things start to happen and you, the watcher, start to shift to the edge of your seat wanting to know what is hunting them and how they are going to survive.

For a low-budget movie the production is nicely done, acting not bad and it does hold you with some chilling suspense.

The “found-footage” genre has been over used in the past few years, with the likes of awful The Devil Inside almost killing it off, but The Tunnel had me gripped to watching it and I thoroughly enjoyed, which says a lot for this genre, as the only two that have had me enjoying them all the through have been The Blair Witch Project and Chronicle.

Overall Thoughts for The Tunnel

The Tunnel is set for DVD release in the UK on the 6th August, so if you like this type of genre, then it’s a film that you will want to see, it may not scare every, but it will have you on the edge of your seat. If you want to find out more about The Tunnel then you can visit “What Is The Tunnel” and @whatisthetunnel on Twitter.

If you enjoyed reading this post, then please remember to post a comment, Subscribe to my RSS feed.