Moscow Zero (2006)

Since I've been on a Russian kick lately with the brilliant "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" films, and then the passable "Trackman", I decided to watch "Moscow Zero" from 2006 as well. I wish I hadn't.

If you've never heard of this film, here's a brief plot outline: "In Moscow, the priest Owen hires a team to guide him in the underworld to find his friend Sergei that is missing while researching the legend about the existence of demons and an entrance to hell beneath the city." And that's it. It's all just a load of running around tunnels looking for the lost archaeologists with a lot of meaningless waffle as dialogue.

I actually fell asleep two or three times and had to watch it over again which made the torture even worse. There was just nothing to this film to keep my interest. There were no scares, was no tension or suspense, and was no action other than the aforementioned exploring of the tunnels. I was hoping that I'd missed something in this because, from the blurb on the DVD cover, it promises "horrifying caverns" and "terrifying secrets". What I didn't expect was that it would deliver such horrifying acting instead.

Seriously, Val Kilmer and Vincent Gallo are so wasted in this that you wonder why they even bothered to show up. In fact, Val Kilmer is only in one scene yet takes top billing in a similar way to how the recent spate of Tony Todd and Robert Englund cameos in dozens of lacklustre indie horror movies fool a lot of people into renting those. Yes, I too have been duped a few times and such practices annoy the hell out of me. But I digressed.

"Moscow Zero" is simply the most tedious and mindnumbing waste of 82 minutes that I've encountered this year. I should have learnt my lesson from Coke as this product is as insipid as a bottle of tasteless brown water too.