The next time you drive over a manhole cover, imagine there is somebody under it, crying out for help, but nobody will hear them over the road noise. That was something that lingered in my mind after seeing 2011 Australian found-footage horror film The Tunnel. At one point, characters futilely scream up through such a cover, and a cut to a security camera reveals they are under a highway. In another scene, a character can hear subway trains whooshing by on the other side of a wall, but there’s no way to break through that wall to reach potential aid.
This picture is filmed almost entirely in abandoned tunnels under Sydney. I’d say that if you know of abandoned tunnels under a metropolis, and they haven’t been used in a horror film yet, you have an obligation to utilize them for that purpose. Similar to those under London, large portions were meant to be used as air raid shelters, and so have dormitories, showers, toilets and the like.
The television news crew that has ventured into those tunnels discovers homeless people have been sleeping there. This is in contradiction to government declarations that nobody is living down there, a claim they have been making to justify their plan to replace the current underground structure with water reclamation tanks.
Bel Deliá is the most recently hired reporter for a big news organization and she smells a story here. She needs a big story like this to keep that job. With just a minimal crew (Andy Rodoreda, Steve Davis, Luke Arnold), she will break into the tunnel system one night after failing to get the proper permissions from the government. An attempt to bribe a guard at a subway station also fails. It will eventually be revealed she didn’t even tell their boss back at the station what she intends to do, and so it turns out nobody knows they are down there.
Despite seeing evidence of homeless having lived down there, they’re not finding any actual people. But they will encounter something that is presumably human, though we never get a very good look at it. We most frequently see through the crew’s night vision camera the glowing eyes of Goran D. Kleut, who is billed only as “Stalker”, as that’s exactly what he does.
An interesting approach to the film is it is not strictly found footage, but is instead incorporated into a documentary format in which two of the group that went into the tunnels are being interviewed after the incident. So, we know two people will emerge from this struggle alive, but no bets will be taken on the fate of the other two. It is through those present-day interview we learn how quickly this mission starts to go off the rails, beginning with the untrustworthy maps they have brought with them: “There were whole sections of tunnel that weren’t even on the map.”
Another thing said in those interviews nicely covers an aspect of found footage many movies don’t sufficiently explain, and that is why every little thing is being filmed. Rodoreda explains he tried to record as much as possible once he started to suspect this will not go well, just for proof he wasn’t to blame if he’s called on the carpet later.
The first sign something is amiss is when Arnold starts picking up through the sound man’s headphones what sounds like whispering. A little while later, they are recording in a room with a giant metal bell that was to be used as a signal, should that facility be used as an air raid shelter. When Deliá strikes the object, it peaks out the recording levels, so Arnold goes into the next room to mic it from there. This will be the film’s first jump scare and it is a doozy.
From here, everything quickly escalates into a frenzy of activity. Most of their gear ends up stolen, leaving them with only the light on the full-size camera, the night vision camera and a flashlight. Rodoreda estimates they have 2-3 hours of battery for the camera light. I can tell you from experience, those never last as long as even your worst-case estimate.
One deeply unnerving scene occurs when the night vision camera is set down outside a room while the group goes in to survey the carnage they see there. When they emerge again, the camera has been moved. Replaying the footage recorded in that time reveals it had been picked up, and something had recorded them while they were oblivious. Then, in only one frame, we have the most fleeting glimpse of what had picked up the camera.
One scene that seems to be direct lift from The Blair Witch Project has Davis turning the camera on Deliá after she reveals nobody knows where they are. He yells at her to keep on getting her “big story” in a way I swear even uses some of the wording from the other picture’s “C’mon, Heather, we’re making a movie” scene.
The Tunnel is very scary, and one of the better found footage films I have seen. It doesn’t reinvent any wheels; however, a feature-length documentary accompanying the movie on a new blu-ray issue details how it became the first crowd-funded movie. As a 90-minute production would be comprised of 135,000 frames, they proceed to sell each individual frame of the film for $1 each. I thought that was a brilliant plan, but I pity all those people who just happened to purchase an image of complete darkness or simply indistinct blurs. Naturally, the movie has a great deal of each of those, just given the nature of the work.
Dir: Carlo Ledesma
Starring Bel Deliá, Andy Rodoreda, Steve Davis, Luke Arnold
Watched on Umbrella US blu-ray