User Reviews

Death Tunnel was more than disappointing... it was abysmally bad. DT looked promising but unfortunately it showed a dull directing with lots of flashes, no gore, no spooks, no sense at all and an unbelievable pain to watch.

I do not have the habit to walk out the theater unless the movie finishes, but with Death Tunnel there were plenty of times where I thought about it. But I stay, hoping that something good could come... frustration... it never did.

The only positive thing about this mess was the hot chicks and the beautiful set of the sanatorium... that's why I thought it was going to be cool to see it. The trailer just got me wrong.

Death Tunnel is really a Death Tunnel... you feel you're trying to reach the light at the end, but the faster you try to walk or run, it seems the endurance never ends.

Avoid at all costs or check it if you like to torture yourself!

Movie is based on the True Stories and Hauntings of Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky. This horrific Five story structure is listed as one of the Top Ten Scariest Places on Earth, due to the 63,000+ deaths within this monument of Terror. They were then carried through the massive Five hundred foot underground Tunnel to their final resting place. The story involves Five girls on a college initiation, dared to spend the night separately on the Five floors of this sanatorium, with the Five ghosts that exist within it's abandoned corridors. Will they make it through the night? For the only way out is through...the Death Tunnel.

This is a film which tries to scare you with cheap imagery and jump scenes. There's nothing really good about this movie (maybe the girls?), it does have a haunting setting and theme but it's executed amateurly. They also rip-off multiple mainstream movies, most notably SAW.

After a few moments into the movie, you realize it's basically just another teen movie (the awful parties, the bitchy girls etc). After they pick some of the most sluttiest girls from our new generation to spend their time in the "haunted" place, you get a movie riddled with confusion. You can be sure to watch girls walk around, investigate and yell out "What the hell am I doing here?" type questions.

The acting isn't too bad but the characters all suck and have shitty lines. So its hard for me to rate them but they seem OK. I like the music in the movie but it's repeated at nauseum. It's like they loved it so much, it was the best part of the movie... it was the movie! Death Tunnel is a bullshit ride which House On Haunted Hill remake lovers could endure but any self-respecting horror fan will realize it's just a festival of try-hard "scary" stuff happening on screen. There's too much scene chopping and flashbacks to keep it progressing well.

Mostly uninteresting and unexciting.

Well made,decent acting,terrible film!Simply put,this film is nothing more than a supernatural slasher/teens in trouble movie,it tries so hard to be something special and fails miserably.There are so many flashbacks its hard to tell whats going on,instead of building the scares up the viewer is faced with countless images thrown at them that there is very little shock value left after the first quarter of the film.The story line is one that has been used literally hundreds of times before,I won,t spoil the story but is consists of five girls in a sorority type initiation etc,etc. .if you are a fan of horror movies you will have seen it many times before.A good location is wasted on a movie that tries to be too intelligent for its own good.Poor.

If there really is a death tunnel...then please somebody lock this trash up in it.

The shock value/scare factor is about 4 on a scale of 100 as far as triller/horror goes, the plot line fragmented beyond belief, the vaseline lens affect wreaks of soft porn and so for that matter does the acting...

A waste of time....a waste of money...and a waste of someone elses idea's.

What might be scary is the fact that some seemed to like it....my god what have we become? Miss this one by a long way if possible.

I rented this "movie" five months ago at my local video store and it still rates as the worst thing ever to enter my DVD player. Imagine my surprise (and secret pleasure) when today I saw that it is now an ex-rental sale at the store for a staggering $4 Australian. I took it to the counter and was told that most of the staff have taken the movie home and watched it for free but none of them were able to watch the movie in its entirety, it was THAT bad. I told him about the producers posting on IMDb and we had a laugh about it. He offered it free if I hired out an overnight movie, so I agreed.

I returned to the counter after picking out some other movies, collected my new prize possession and returned home. On the way, I thought about the different ways I could destroy the DVD - burn it, smash it with a hammer, axe it to pieces etc. I eventually decided to simply bury it. I knew the perfect place for it, a twenty foot cylindrical hole that was left behind when we removed our old bore-water pump (I'm in rural Australia folks). A perfect fit, Death Tunnel disappeared down its very own DVD Tunnel. As I was urinating into the hole, I realized I had made a huge mistake.

Now I've got a copy of Death Tunnel buried in my backyard, twenty feet down. Whereas before it was simply a movie I hated and tried to forget about, now its a movie I hate that I will never be able to be rid of. Its right there, in my backyard. Twenty feet down. Untouchable. Preserved. I stare at the spot every time I pass a window, like I murdered a person and secretly stashed the body out there. I've considered pouring petrol down the hole but I can't be sure if that will destroy it, I've considered firing up the tractor and excavating it like a madman on a mission. Damn you Death Tunnel, I should have just dropped you in the bin like the guy at the counter suggested.

In Kentucky, five sexy students are trapped to spend the night in an abandoned sanatorium, where many people were killed in the 30's when the location was devastated by an infectious white plague, as a prank of their school mates. Along the night, while trying to escape from the asylum, they are haunted by ghosts and the survivors disclose that they are descendant of the victims and are reviving their deaths.

"Death Tunnel" is a messy, noisy and boring rip-off of many other movies, with a group of students trapped in a haunted building. The screenplay and the edition are terrible, using unsuccessfully noise to startle the viewers. The acting is not bad, but the best of this forgettable crap are the girls wearing lingerie. The conclusion is simply awful. My vote is one.

Title (Brazil): "O Túnel da Morte" ("The Death Tunnel")

Pitiful acting, incomprehensible editing, cliché "scares", terrible story and a thoroughly pointless waste of time. Better acting has been observed in high school dramas than in this messy, amateurish effort. The only redeemable feature of this bomb is the location. This is very poor film making at its very worst. It's like "House on Haunted Hill" mated with an 80's teen aged sex/slasher romp and bore a hideously deformed mess of half-naked horse-faced women and a shockingly unimaginative plot story unsuccessfully held together by effects that one could enjoy watching a movie made by teenagers who have access to a camera, a computer and a spooky location. Did I mention this movie sucks? AVOID.

Note: Many of the "reviews" for this incredibly poor film seem to be written by people who actually worked on this film or were hired to promote it. Go read a book or watch something that will leave you with something besides the vague sense of being robbed of 90 minutes of your life that you'll never get back.

Jesus Christ.

I want my 90 minutes back.

It seems like people involved in making the movie must be writing all of the incredibly glowing reviews on here, so after having watched this gutted, burning shell of what could be called a movie I decided to write a little something as a stern and honest warning to people who don't like wasting their time and money.

Death Tunnel, Death Tunnel, oh god end my pain, Death Tunnel.. How could you be so terrible? You have so much going for you on paper:

1) Creepy setting

2) ...

OK, so you really don't have so much going for you, so why did I expect so much out of you? I think it was because I read an interview with your director and he name-dropped a few movies that I really enjoyed as some of his favorite movies of all time. I guess that's makes us all individuals; we can all share seemingly endless qualities with one another as a people, but not all of us have the ability to convince people to pay them to defecate.

Were I able to find someone to financially back my excrement, I would first want to know what they, my financiers, wanted to do with said excrement. Were they going to wear it as a hat? Possibly use it to plug up a leaky faucet? Try and make other people pay more money than they invested in it to sit down and watch this turd for 90 minutes? OK, hold the phone, you're telling me that people would pay money to look at my feces if you had your say about it, Daddy Warbucks? It's a deal, but, would you mind if I polished it up a bit? After all, it is MY feces.

Oh Death Tunnel, if only the people responsible for your excretion wanted you to be anything more than a pile of droppings... If only they could see that, as you are, you are so much dead weight around the shoulders of humankind, the yoke of Rushed Out Crap to DVD that is synonymous with other movies that fail as miserably as you do. If only people wouldn't stand for your brand of completely banal tripe with horrible, ADD editing glazed on in post to try and stupefy the audience since there's no other form of emotional connection to them that you are capable of presenting.

If you love your life, if you cherish your time spent being alive, please, resist any and every urge that you may have to watch this travesty of cinema. Cut off your own feet if it would stop you from walking to the store where you might accidentally buy it because you think the box art looks interesting. Gouge out your own eyes if it somehow finds itself in your DVD player. You might even want to go so far as to remove your own tongue if it would keep you from mentioning the movie to someone else.

This movie is Death Tunnel, after all, and yes, it really is that bad.

Despite all of the other reviews claiming otherwise, this is a great film full of excitement, shocks, and twists. A must watch for every horror lover! Editing - the overall impression I received is that this film was well edited, especially for a low budget film. The special effects were superb, and while, as other reviews have pointed out, there are a few flaws, such as the cloud incident, these can often be overlooked while you are caught up in the story. '5 girls sent to a dark scary place as a student prank' is often an overused device in film, but there are several starkly original elements of the film, which you will discover yourself.

If you watch this movie without knowing any of the history, I can understand why you would say it sucks; and I would agree. However, you need to understand what the director is trying to accomplish in order to appreciate what is going on.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium is a real place in Kentucky. It was built as a hospital to fight TB back in the early 1900's. There wasn't a cure, and morale was low, so the death tunnel was built to export bodies out of the building without the living seeing them. Patients not seeing the high death rate were given a new hope. It's an amazing building with an intriguing past, and is truly believed to be haunted.

Many of the scenes the director portrayed are actual accounts of what people have said to have witnessed. He's taken these stories and attempted to derive a horror flick. For this reason, and this reason alone, I would recommend the movie.

Now, to get to the movie.

First off, the acting isn't brilliant. Kristin Novak's character Ashley is ridiculously obnoxious, and the others are over-dramatic. The storyline isn't put together well, and it doesn't do a very good of explaining what is going on, so it's hard to follow. (If you know the history of Waverly Hills, it's not as bad).

I dug the movie because of it's history, not because it's good. I would definitely recommend checking out the episode of Ghost Hunters (Sci-Fi Channel) where they investigate the building; or check out the documentary (Also directed by Booth and aired on the Sci-Fi Channel).

The Waverly Hills Sanatorium is an amazing place, and it's a shame that the movie isn't any better.

Don't believe any of the good comments above. These people have some wicked way of torture themselves. I seen this film and I also want my 90min of lost time and my money back. Not even the three chicks which are put in for being slaughtered are very attractive. One has so many silicone or whatever the use nowadays in her lips that its not possible to look at her for longer without wondering when her lips will explode. The whole film got no tension at all and you just want the next girl to be kill so this torture of looking has an end. Maybee you can use this film to torture your boy/girlfriend but this will be the only horror this film will possible can used for. Please do yourself something good and leave this film alone.

I just kept thinking "maybe it will start making sense". It didn't. In fact, I STILL have no idea what this movie was supposed to be about. In about the last 15 minutes, it is declared that it is history repeating itself. All of the girls looked the same, so you really didn't know what was happening. One minute they are at a nightclub, then they are in a abandoned asylum. Near the end of the movie, some dead male bodies appear in a morgue. No idea where they came from.

Then throughout the movie, they would show girls dieing, but you didn't know if it really happened or if it was a flashback to something. The only way you knew the movie was progressing is once in a while some presumably dead character which was never explained would say "Three hours.. three girls..." etc.

The whole movie is a bunch of five second scenes that have nothing to do with each other one right after another.

The location could have made a decent movie, but this ended up seeming more like a junior high school production that went bad.

This could easily be the most stupid movie I have ever seen.

Where do I start with this abomination and absolute waste of film? The only reason I rented this piece of dung to begin with were the words "five sexy coeds" on the back of the package. My brain hurts just thinking of things to say afterwords. I really would like money put back into my account at Blockbuster video since they did not deter me from renting this horrible stink nugget. Of the five "sexy coeds" only three were remotely attractive with the other two hose-beasts leaving me waiting for my building's power to shut off and for me to be struck dead by lightning. I don't feel like going out of my way to give away any of this movie's plot to any prospective viewer since I don't want anyone else to suffer the same fate as I. The director of this movie will forever live in shame....shame.

This movie contains some great cinematography and lighting. But that's it. As far as plot and flow are concerned I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that someone dropped a ton of three minute clips on the floor of the editing suite and then just piled them randomly into a playlist. In fact if you wanted to make your own 'director's cut' you could do just that. Chop the flick into three-minute clips and then watch them back on Windows Media Player set on random. It won't make the slightest difference to your 'enjoyment' of this film and there has to be a good chance that it would improve it. If I hadn't seen the 'Spooked' documentary last night I wouldn't have had even the faintest idea what was going on. The documentary helped me understand not because it was an interesting and educational piece of work (a collection of interviews with members of some band and a couple of bimbos) but because it contained interview footage of the pair of imbeciles who made this. Two ageing wannabe Bon Jovi support act members talking stultifying drivel. Hilarious stuff.

Shot on location at Waverly Hills Sanitorium, the story goes that they didn't pay the owners for the use of the building. Whilst I feel sorry for the guys they ripped off it might end up being a saving grace for cinema if it puts anyone off funding these buffoons in future.

Within ten minutes of the opening credits they are paying clunky homage to every horror movie that has been shot in the last 50 years. I'm not joking. See if you can spot Ringu, White Noise, Nosferatu, Carrie, Fear.com and Saw. The half-naked women might keep some younger people interested for ten minutes but, seriously guys, stick to playing air-guitar and never, ever go near a digicam again.

If Tool were playing during this movie, and about 92 of the 97 run time cut, this would make a really cool music video. As it stands though, its just what the subject line says. A bunch of flashy 9though admittedly well shot) images. Its like the "writers" sat down and though of some things which creeped them out, then scribbled down a script that allowed those images to be seen. I say script and not story, because there really is no discernible story or plot going on. It jumps all over the place from a mother/daughter tale, to a rich snotty girl, all tangled up in "the white plague". If asked to write a summary for the plot, I would be left clueless, as i truly have no idea. The fx, minimal as they are are all decent enough, but the person who really stands out (the films only real saving grace) is the production design. that person should be proud, as the look of the film is definitely disturbing and creepy. Honestly though, despite the often nude very attractive women, this movie was a struggle to get through.

The first 15 seconds where you read about the actual history was good. It was all downhill from there...

I am going to admit to movie piracy on this one, just so they can sue me for it. I will then counter-sue for the pain and suffering and emotion damage I suffered from wasting my time watching this piece of crap.

It's too bad really because the story had a lot of potential. The fault lies solely with Philip Adrian Booth the writer/director. If I see his name near anything else I will immediately throw myself into traffic.

If you and your friends enjoy making like MST3K with crap movies, this one has a lot to work with.

I rented this with my fiancé this weekend because we figured it would be something we could have a good laugh about. Cheesy B horror movies typically put a grin on my face, but I have to say that I literally could not finish this movie the first time through. So we put it in the second day and gave it a shot. Stupid idea.

First of all, it was slammed full of horror clichés, pulling elements from more popular films such as Saw, The Ring, and The Grudge, none of which were impressively scary. The amusing thing was I couldn't even keep up with the film because of the horrible editing, and yet I turned to my fiancé within 20 minutes of the movie and I said something like, "Let me guess, they're all relatives of people that used to work here just like in that House on Haunted Hill movie that sucked really bad also." There were no memorable moments. The death scenes were unoriginal and unimpressive. This movie was something I would expect to act as a project from a student in film school. The acting was less than sub par and they took a potentially great atmosphere and spit on it.

Needless to say, I didn't get scared, and I didn't even get to laugh at it. I would say I'm disappointed, except I was never expecting it to be good; I just wish it hadn't been so bad.

I am a guy that really loves a "good" bad movie. What I mean is, if a movie is really bad, I will enjoy it because it makes me laugh. However, this movie surprised me! I was expecting it to be at a level of bad that was laughable, but no, it was below that line. WAY BELOW!!! The movies opening screen of text made me feel that this movie might be promising (that picture of the girl with the weird rash on her face freaks me out). But then, RIGHT AFTER that scene is a scene that you see later in the movie and is only there so that you don't turn off the movie right away.

Something that needs to be said is that this movie tries to keep you guessing by making the order of scenes like a puzzle. But it turns out just to be confusing and a waste of mental energy for such a stupid plot. The beginning is dumb, (look at the green scary face!), and the ending doesn't make sense, a waste of time.

Overall, there are so many things that make this terrible, the saw ripoff, the very unappealing girls, the rice paper thin plot, the really really really bad acting, the photo shopped props (I am not kidding, the directors must have forgotten to put them on set so they just edit them in badly), you know what? I have given up on listing, just remember, NEVER EVER EVER EVER RENT THIS AND GOD HELP YOU IF YOU CHOOSE TO BUY THIS!!!

Please do not give the makers of this movie happy, because they worked so hard to make us filled with pain.

Arriving in southern Kentucky, sorority girls and other local college students told they would be locked inside a nearby haunted house that treated plague victims years ago find it's being haunted by the ghosts of the deceased there and try to get out of the location alive.

This here is a pretty enjoyable film. One of the best things about it is the absolutely creepy location of the hospital as it's among the most chilling haunted houses ever. It's not enough that the backstory to this is creepy already as the actual location it's set at makes for a perfect fodder for these kinds of films, but to mix it with a terrifying location just makes it the absolute best. The hallways are dark, dirty, unclean and terrifying, appearing to go on for miles off into the darkness, which is always quite fun, while the different rooms where there's plenty of creepy goings-on inside their gives it a lot of fun here. The fun premise here is not to be outdone by the creepy factor here, which uses the traditional college initiation factor mixed with the haunted house-style location that actually has a secret purpose, but this is all done with such a creepy and generally oppressive tone that makes it all the better with the fact that all of them are tormented by different shock tactics. There's always the quick shock cuts of seeing ghostly figures wandering around in the background or flinging objects at them which prove to be hallucinations get some chills into an already creepy film. The few times where outside noises are used make it even better, since it pops up when there's nothing else to be heard and really adds a great feel to this one. There's also the fact that it plays around with classic ghost movie scares to make it feel even more creepy and terrifying, as the shower hallucination is top-notch, a couple of scenes where the ghosts go on major stalking rampage in the second half banging around on the walls, appearing as a character's reflection in a mirror or someone barely catches notice of a ghostly figure running by in the background really helps to not only add to that creepiness but give it some solid haunting action leading into the final half. The few kills in here aren't that bad getting in some needed gore, and with the shower scene here giving it a really nice bit of nudity, all make the film somewhat watchable and enjoyable, but there are a couple of problems with it. The main one here is the absolutely disjointed plot line it has. While it is a novel idea to have the film continuously go back-and- forth between three or four different points in time during the course of the film to try to explain what's going on, instead of simplifying things they make the film even less understandable. The jumping back-and-forth between the several different time-periods at random intervals no less makes this nearly impossible to comprehend, and that would be the big problem with it all as it makes them seem all the jumbled around for no reason. This is the main part of this one's flaws.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and Nudity.

Death Tunnel was a pleasant surprise after reading some reviews, yes it basically is a generic story, with generic teens and generic horror in a MTV music video style, but...

...I was captivated by the quality of the editing, it was pretty chaotic at points and you struggled to see what was happening, but it's those moments you see in follow up viewings and tie in with the plot you know already. If a film reveals all in one showing then it becomes quickly disposable.

The use of light and shadow was it's biggest tool, a lot of energy went into it's use to evoke atmosphere and emotional content, and did it well. There was a lot of post production and it showed attention to detail fused with a passion. The composition of most shots was well thought out, each frame a photo which tells a story in it own right.

It ain't going down in cinema history as a milestone, but it is a visual treat.

Update: 5 years later, I still HATE this movie ...

I know it's dated and the Simpsons stopped mattering a long time ago but, Worst ... Movie ... Ever! Seriously, I have logged in here, like twice, maybe 3 times ever, and 2 of those were to expound on how much this movie will rot your brain. Ugh, it is truly that awful ... 5 years later, and the scars have not healed. WORST MOVIE EVER.

Flashback: 1983, my college roommate and I wander off to a midnight movie showing of "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." This movie is already old hat as 'so horribly bad, it's good' among those who know, but neither of us have seen it. We shift and squirm in our seats, waiting for the moment that could possibly make this pathetic pile of sh!t worth sitting through ... and then it comes. Wow. High concept to the extreme; a feature length film with one punch line, the giant tomato wearing ear muffs, wow. You know what though? AOTKT has THAT over this steaming pile of cr@p! There is NO high concept here, not even one freaking almost-saving-grace punch line ... nada. It is just painful and stupid and mind-numbing and aarrggh, it makes me shudder to think about it - mommy?

I would rather have a fire hydrant pounded up my behind than be forced to sit through this movie again. Yes, FIVE YEARS later and I still feel that strongly about how terrible this film is! The people responsible should be beyond ashamed. I am dead serious.

---

Anyone who says they like this movie is lying ... and possibly getting paid off by the production staff. BTW, who the hell is bankrolling these idiots? How the hell did they manage to get funding for another film after this "makes me want to blow my brains out rather than watch another minute" pile of crap? Not just for another film, but several more? Simply boggles the mind ... they must have a rich uncle willing to waste his fortune funding these buffoons.

Just watched this on SciFi channel this morning ... if I hadn't been so hung-over I might have found the energy to change the channel, but figured it just had to get better ... WRONG! I have never commented here before, but simply felt compelled to after suffering through that viewing ... you want to be afraid, then watch this, but not "afraid" for the reason you'd want. Seriously, I am left trembling with anger and resentment for having watched this, and will probably be emotionally scarred for life after being subjected to this brainless/pointless ... no, that's being too fair, that implies lack of positive value, but does not reinforce just how painfully negative an experience this is ... OMG, this film will make you scared that humanity is capable of producing something so horrible. Last time I felt this way was after visiting the Holocaust Museum in DC ... really, I'm not joking at all ... this movie is disturbing in a "how can anyone who produced this be allowed to live?" kind of way, it is that dehumanizing. Even for the Sci Fi channel, with its notoriously bad low-budget films, this reached an all-time rock-bottom low!

Just in case you're missing my point ... I don't mean "horrible" in a "too much violence/sex/gore" kind of way, cause I'm sure many people out there might find that an enjoyable challenge ... NO, I mean "horrible" in a "this is nothing but a continuous nonsensical stream of cliché movie clips acted by people who could not make the cast of the local repertory production of Cats" kind of way. If you have a brain, you will be confused by the lack of sense behind this movie to such an extent it'll make your nose bleed ... this is not "intelligent" bending of sensibility either, ala Surrealist art ... this ain't no "Andalusian Dog" ... just a dog ... of the flea-bitten, rabid, junkyard variety. It could ALMOST be funny if presented with just a glimmer of self-aware parody, yet clearly the producers/director take this seriously, and that's the final infuriating nail pounded between the eyes! Damn, these guys must've really done some serious drugs to have impaired their sense of reality to the point that they think this has any merit ... it does not. By that I mean it does not have ANY merit ... zero ... there is nothing positive about this movie ... at all.

WORST ... MOVIE ... EVER!

If anyone out there really did like this, then there must be something very wrong with you.

I think the U.N would have to object if Gitmo prisoners were forced to watch this ... that whole "no torture" thing, you know.

Compared to this, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" and "Plan Nine from Outer Space" are high art ... really, it is THAT bad.

This flick really is extraordinarily bad. What starts out as a promising teen-slasher-thing soon becomes lost in the attempt to decide what it wants to be - mystery-thriller? Ghost-story? 10-little-sailors? The one "good" thing to be said about the whole movie is that the set-design is really really gross: If you've ever been in a condemned building and if you have ever seen vintage surgical instruments (the kind where you can't even begin to imagine what they were used for but the pure look of them makes you cringe), the imagery will make you queasy: Flaking paint and dirt everywhere, rusty gadgets, wheelchairs - the place looks like it really could have been a pest-control-center sometime during the 30s (if you hate hospitals by default, this could be you personal hell). Speaking of which - contrary to the content-description given here, as far as i know this place never really existed, the whole "based on true events" routine was a publicity-scam. Back to the film: It really isn't much more than a rather gruesome-looking film-student level horror flick which even fails to deliver any real "slasher-moments", it almost looks as though the producers pulled their punches in that area, which takes off whatever edge the movie might have had: The cast gives the appearance of a bunch of Beverly Hills 91201 casting-rejects, half-dozen pretty dolls stumbling through the derelict hospital, getting picked of one by one by the "ghosts". Throw in the odd gratuitous topless-scene, an old curse, a sort-of-scary looking monster/guy in a gas-mask and a love-story between the main leads that is getting nowhere, what've you got? Well, "Death Tunnel", as is is - a movie that probably dropped out of someone's "dark hole", and which should really be rammed back in there.