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ladymidathBecause of spoilers, I am putting this under a cut.
The Tunnel is a 2011 Australian horror film directed by Carlo Ledesma, and co-written, co-produced and co-edited by Julian Harvey and Enzo Tedeschi. The film stars Bel Deliá, Andy Rodoreda, Steve Davis, Luke Arnold, Goran D. Kleut and James Caitlin, in a documentary-style horror story set in the underground network of abandoned railway tunnels in Sydney, Australia.
Now a little history. Under Sydney is a vast network of railway tunnels all linking to each other. Many of them were never used and lie abandoned. In the tunnels lie a huge underground lake and a large metal bell or bell like structure that no one really knows much about. There have been speculation as too whether the bell was used as a warning system in WW ll or whether it was put there for sound effects for film. Someone thought it might have been a forgotten sculpture. But the things that you see in this film do exist.
Also, Sydney was built over a massive graveyard, The Town Hall and Cathedral are now on the site of what had once been a graveyard used for the early settlers and convicts so Sydney has a pretty eerie history. These are the little facts that the government tends to keep out of the tourist brochures. :-)
Now that we have that little bit of history out of the way, onto the movie.
I said in a previous post that I was going to do a review of some older films and I still will but after seeing The Tunnel, I was so impressed that I decided to do a Geeky Girl post about it instead.
The Tunnel is a 'found film' similar to The Blair Witch Project, Rec, Paranormal Activity etc. The story revolves around a young journalist Natasha Warner. She is investigating a story about recycling water from a huge underground lake. There is a lot of publicity and then the story is dropped. Natasha, being the intrepid reporter that she is pursues the story to find out why, after all the fan fare, the idea about recycling the water is dropped.
She then discovers that not only are homeless people living in the abandoned tunnels but there have been some that have gone missing.
All this and a creepy Youtube video involving young graffiti artists are enough to send Natasha's alarm bells ringing. So armed with her camera crew, Peter Ferguson (producer) Steve Miller(cameraman)
and Jim ‘Tangles’ Williams (sound recordists) they go into the tunnels to find a story.
This is where the movie gets really frightening.
The location of the film is itself very eerie, mostly set in the disused railway tunnels. The acting is very strong from the entire cast consisting of, Bel Deliá as Natasha Warner, Andy Rodoreda as Peter Ferguson, Steve Davis as Steve Miller, Luke Arnold as Jim ‘Tangles’ Williams, Goran D. Kleut as Stalker, James Caitlin as Trevor Jones and Russell Jeffrey as Sef.
Even though the found film thing has done before, The Tunnel is a very strong and creepy movie. Done very simply with a minimal cast, the film manages to build a genuine air of menace.
The itself film was funded using a crowd-funded financing model, as part of the 135k Project, where the film's writer-producers Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey sold individual digital frames of the film for A$1, to try and raise the film's A$135,000 target budget. However this method only managed to raise approximately A$36,000, so the filmmakers exerted a certain "creativity" to complete the film with this limited budget. The film used viral marketing and it was the first to be released over bit torrent as well as a limited theatrical release.
So despite the low budget, or perhaps because of it. The Tunnel is one of the better horror films to date and I have to add, that living in Sydney, it was fun to see so many areas that I know.
On another note. There used to be ghost tours of the tunnels, including the lake and bell room but they have been stopped. I do not know why. Just adds to the atmosphere of the film. :-)
Also posted to LJ
The Tunnel is a 2011 Australian horror film directed by Carlo Ledesma, and co-written, co-produced and co-edited by Julian Harvey and Enzo Tedeschi. The film stars Bel Deliá, Andy Rodoreda, Steve Davis, Luke Arnold, Goran D. Kleut and James Caitlin, in a documentary-style horror story set in the underground network of abandoned railway tunnels in Sydney, Australia.
Now a little history. Under Sydney is a vast network of railway tunnels all linking to each other. Many of them were never used and lie abandoned. In the tunnels lie a huge underground lake and a large metal bell or bell like structure that no one really knows much about. There have been speculation as too whether the bell was used as a warning system in WW ll or whether it was put there for sound effects for film. Someone thought it might have been a forgotten sculpture. But the things that you see in this film do exist.
Also, Sydney was built over a massive graveyard, The Town Hall and Cathedral are now on the site of what had once been a graveyard used for the early settlers and convicts so Sydney has a pretty eerie history. These are the little facts that the government tends to keep out of the tourist brochures. :-)
Now that we have that little bit of history out of the way, onto the movie.
I said in a previous post that I was going to do a review of some older films and I still will but after seeing The Tunnel, I was so impressed that I decided to do a Geeky Girl post about it instead.
The Tunnel is a 'found film' similar to The Blair Witch Project, Rec, Paranormal Activity etc. The story revolves around a young journalist Natasha Warner. She is investigating a story about recycling water from a huge underground lake. There is a lot of publicity and then the story is dropped. Natasha, being the intrepid reporter that she is pursues the story to find out why, after all the fan fare, the idea about recycling the water is dropped.
She then discovers that not only are homeless people living in the abandoned tunnels but there have been some that have gone missing.
All this and a creepy Youtube video involving young graffiti artists are enough to send Natasha's alarm bells ringing. So armed with her camera crew, Peter Ferguson (producer) Steve Miller(cameraman)
and Jim ‘Tangles’ Williams (sound recordists) they go into the tunnels to find a story.
This is where the movie gets really frightening.
The location of the film is itself very eerie, mostly set in the disused railway tunnels. The acting is very strong from the entire cast consisting of, Bel Deliá as Natasha Warner, Andy Rodoreda as Peter Ferguson, Steve Davis as Steve Miller, Luke Arnold as Jim ‘Tangles’ Williams, Goran D. Kleut as Stalker, James Caitlin as Trevor Jones and Russell Jeffrey as Sef.
Even though the found film thing has done before, The Tunnel is a very strong and creepy movie. Done very simply with a minimal cast, the film manages to build a genuine air of menace.
The itself film was funded using a crowd-funded financing model, as part of the 135k Project, where the film's writer-producers Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey sold individual digital frames of the film for A$1, to try and raise the film's A$135,000 target budget. However this method only managed to raise approximately A$36,000, so the filmmakers exerted a certain "creativity" to complete the film with this limited budget. The film used viral marketing and it was the first to be released over bit torrent as well as a limited theatrical release.
So despite the low budget, or perhaps because of it. The Tunnel is one of the better horror films to date and I have to add, that living in Sydney, it was fun to see so many areas that I know.
On another note. There used to be ghost tours of the tunnels, including the lake and bell room but they have been stopped. I do not know why. Just adds to the atmosphere of the film. :-)
Also posted to LJ
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