Plot
On their way back from an anti-war
demonstration, five friends stop briefly in the countryside where they find
a hatch in the middle of the forest and decide to explore. The hatch seals
shut behind them, trapping them in a dark series of corridors and rooms. The
underground maze is the worst of their troubles when they discover that
their situation is far worse than first imagined.
Review
I had no idea what to expect from this flick. "Starring
Danny Dyer" didn't fill me with confidence, especially as his output
has been on the feeble side of late. Even worse is when I clocked the running time
at a measly 74 minutes. That's never a good sign when a story can't even
string itself out for at least 80-90 minutes. The basic idea to the film
sounds simple enough. It's hardly an original idea but I was prepared to
give it a go and see what the director could do with the old "people trapped
in a confined location" chestnut. And it even received a limited theatrical
release which must count for something. So why does everything go horribly
wrong with Basement right from the start?
Basement is one of the single most uneventful films ever. There's
nothing I can recommended about it in the slightest. No scenes spring to
mind. No plot twists. No lines of dialogue. No thrilling moments. Not even
an atmosphere. Just absolute nothing. It's almost as if nothing happens
throughout the film. The
story is all over the place or at least what story we get. We're given
scraps to put together an overall picture but it doesn't make any sense. It's badly drawn out,
even at 74 minutes. The
characters walk aimlessly around the same few rooms and corridors for what seems like
most of the film's running time. In fact it is most of the film. I think
they just re-used the same shots over and over again and flipped them around
so instead of walking to the left, the characters walked off to the right
instead. They do a bit of talking, walk a bit, do a bit of arguing, do
another bit of walking, etc. The sets aren't well lit either and not
particularly interesting to look at which lends the film a grungy monotony.
Apart from one novelty room featuring a mirror and a sink, the rest of the
rooms are just empty spaces with dripping walls. Aside from a few moments of
curious tension when the group first explore the underground complex, the
rest of the time they're walking around there is no atmosphere. You never
get the sense that they're actually trapped down there. You never get the
sense that they're in danger. We don't even get a sense of claustrophobia
that these people are trapped underground. Even the climatic scenes when the
"shocking" plot twist has been unveiled lack any sort of dramatic gravitas.
Such is your interest in the film at this point, they could have had a
dancing pink elephant quoting Shakespeare and I wouldn't have given a toss.
Films need events in them to generate something be it a scare, a laugh, a
tear....anything. Without anything happening on screen, how first time
director Asham Kamboj can expect to create any sort of atmosphere or scares
is beyond me.
The cast is
dreadful. Danny Dyer can pull a performance out of his ass when he needs to
(Severance anyone?) but his delivery here makes him sound hung-over.
It's like he filmed this between happy hours on a night out in London. His
usual laddish approach has gone and instead Dyer goes the opposite
direction, turning in his most subdued performance ever. Jimi Mistry is
someone else who has starred in bigger films (The Guru....yeah I know
but it was a modest hit) but on this basis, he'll be hard pressed to get
another bit role, let alone leading part. He tries to act with more
conviction than the rest of the cast and tries to give the script a bit of
punch with more assertive delivery but because the writing is dreadful, his
lines come out as if he's overacting terribly. His Mockney accent is
atrocious too and does him no favours. To be fair to them and the rest of
the cast, the characters they have to work with hardly exist. We know their
names, that they're all anti-war and that one of them is pregnant. But
that's really it, we're literally told nothing else. Once they're
underground, they follow the usual pattern of slowly starting to crack up
and turn on each other. We don't care though.
Verdict
Basement is unlike anything I've ever
seen before. It's just a complete nonentity of a film which serves no
purpose at all except to prove that boredom does exist. It's got no life in
it and in fact it drains it from you every minute you watch. I can't call it
the worst film I've ever seen because nothing happens in it for me to make
that claim but it comes close.
