It's hard for older persons such as myself to enjoy teen movies. The real problem as I see it for The Mine is that these teens are not 14 but more like 18, and one has just done pre-med, implying she's intelligent. Her excuse is that she's still in love with the lead bloke. The love triangle is actually quite adult and sweet. The story, basically, is pretty solid and nouveau, but it would have made way more sense for theses kids to have been 12. Now that would have made this movie a work of genius. They decide to party at Halloween outside an abandoned mine, one that is known to be traitorous, and one where many have met misfortune or just disappeared over the last 100 years. So obviously it's a dangerous mine. First problem. Why then is there barely a sign or proper seal to prevent entry to the mine? Second problem. Why are these kids out in the wilderness without checking the weather forecast? Third problem. Why do they agree to enter the mine rather than go back to their car when a thunderstorm strikes? At least they agree, sensibly, to only go in as far as necessary to be out of the rain. Fourth problem. Why do they agree to descend further into the mine just because their idiot lead bloke thinks it would be a hoot? One of the girls appears to be on serious anxiety medication for a start, and she's the med student, and she's first to go down! Fifth problem. How is it they are so stupid as to immediately find themselves, all of them, stuck done a vertical entrance shaft? OK, it's a teen movie, and we the suffering public have to put up with teen movie after teen movie where teens are almost always painted as idiots. Why there is no outcry against this trend I'll never know. Oddly, from here on it actually gets a lot better. The twists and turns of the mine are actually quite interesting, well lit and designed. I didn't find it claustrophobic down there. The filming is actually quite good. If you make it to the last third of the movie the story actually reaches a level of something quite profound for a teen movie. I was actually really glad I got through the cringes at the beginning. I'd even go so far as to wish the filmmakers well and assure them that The Mine was sufficiently impressive for me to look up what else they've done. Good luck to all concerned. A pretty good effort, but please spend longer when next you write your lead in.

I went into this movie expecting the typical lame, but comical haunted ghost movie - full of all the usual points: one note characters, bad acting and stupid dialogue.

What I walked out with? Way more than I expected and I'm now ready to list this movie in my Top 10 Favorite Horror Films.

The way the movie started, I was all set for my cheesy, B-movie night. But after about the first fifteen minutes, I found myself invested. So much to the point that I didn't even check my phone once or look away from the movie. The characters, which start with all the stereotypes, end up being characters you find yourself getting attached to. As you're with them longer and longer, this film takes its time for character development in between the paranoia-filled scares.

And not that "rushed" development like most modern horror movies love to do. You know. The ones where it's like...two lines in the entire movie and it's only done before the final scare scene? This movie doesn't do that. And the characters this film created, I thought, were very realistic, as were their reactions and responses to what's happening.

With all of that going for it, and with the movie never showing you what exactly is going after them - which a lot of the fear comes from you never seeing anything - I found myself getting nervous. How were they going to end this film in a clever way that doesn't spit on the rest of the film? You know how a bad ending can ruin an otherwise great film? I was so scared that was going to happen.

While I can't say how it ended, what I can tell you is that the build up and execution is perfect. You never see it coming and that's what makes it so great.

In reality, if I had to pick one flaw from the ending, it's the very last scene before the credits roll. Again, I won't say what it is, but it was the only thing I found myself disliking. If for any reason, the movie is an otherwise great psychological case study.

The pros to this film are the pacing and characters. At certain moments, I literally teared up! I got that attached to these characters! And that's not something easily done in horror films - especially anything coming out after the mid-70s. This movie had me scared. And being a horror movie junkie, I don't usually get scared. I'm one of those that will sit through movies like "The Hills Have Eyes" and "The Conjuring" and laugh my way through them due to how stupid and over the top they are.

So, yeah. I do recommend this movie. Not just to the horror movie junkies like myself, but anyone who's willing to have their mentality tested.

I love horror movies and honestly, I'll give almost anything a chance which means I have watched some truly awful movies. Abandoned Mine is definitely not even a candidate for that list. It's not a great movie, but it's far from terrible. I felt invested enough to continue watching until the very end.

Sure, it's cliché. But I think the movie goes out of its way to acknowledge that. It has a generic title. It takes place on Halloween. The characters tell a scary story in front of the haunted, abandoned, so-scary-oh-god-no mine about its past on the not quite 100 year anniversary of the tragedy that caused it to be haunted. So, I don't think the movie's really trying to take itself all that seriously.

The actors are actually fairly strong for a movie like this. Alexa Vega is always a treat and though she's playing the female character who's afraid of everything, it's hardly ever grating which takes talent. Reiley McClendon straddles the line between jerk and jerkily charming for most of the movie. Adam Hendershott plays a generic, ex-jock character and does it well though his freak out at one point is actually quite good. Charan Prabhakar plays a character that is a stereotype but is also very aware of that; his deadpan delivery of some of the more outlandish lines really sells the character as the best thing about the movie for me. Then there's Saige Thompson. She's not a bad actress but she's definitely the weakest of the group, her big, dramatic moment being the worst in the film.

The main thing the movie does wrong is abandon the majority of its ambiguity near the very end causing it to lose whatever originality it had.