The Devil Below

I could have tried something good, but I watched this instead. 

Basically, this quartet of guys, headed by a couple of geologists, hire this professional tracker or something to find this coal mine and town in Kentucky that just vanished fifty years ago. The locals all pretend there was never any such town and try to drive the group away. One of the geologists insists that it was probably just a sinkhole or the underground coal seam caught fire. There's a town in Pennsylvania that had to be abandoned because of that. The other geologist, who is the token Religious Guy, says they were actually trying to recreate the bore hole the Russians made that went 8 miles down, and found something.

This could all be a very interesting set-up for the five of them ending up in the underground mine, and bad things happen, and hey, is it monsters, or angry rednecks or just that you're wandering around in an underground coal mine that is on fire. Unfortunately, the movie spoiled within the first minute that it is definitely something down there, because we see something grab one of the coal miners right in front of his father. Which takes a lot of the suspense out of it. It becomes just waiting to see how goofy the monsters look.

I thought they'd go a bit more demonic with the creatures, given the title of the movie and Religious Scientist talking about Russia's Well to Hell or whatever he called it, but not really. I guess big leathery wings wouldn't really make sense for a subterranean creature, anyway.

It's a little interesting that the locals are trying to keep it a secret not because they hate outsiders, or want to be able to feed unsuspecting outsiders to the creatures, but because they're honestly trying to keep these things from escaping and they simply don't think anyone would believe or help them. Their methods could use some work, but that was sorta atypical for these kinds of movies.