The Deep Dark

This one was so close to being a really good French horror movie. The acting is good, the Lovecraftian story well done and the writing competent. Everything is very dark and claustrophobic with some tense atmospheric moments. There is also a pretty good amount of well done gore and blood FX. Unfortunately around the 1 hour mark when the creature shows up it loses it's way a bit. While the creatures designs is ok they appear to have used a puppet rather than an actor in a suit and it really just doesn't work. The creature barely moves and it's very stiff, slow and jerky in what little movement it does make. It's just not scary when the monster just stands there most of the time and doesn't do anything. As for woke, there is some diversity in the casting, however France did use a lot of immigrants and foreigners in mines at the time so the casting is probably about right. However the Arab immigrant character is the one pushed as the hero and is the mortally superior one and smarter than the rest. The French character Louis is blatantly racist which doesn't make a lot of sense given many of the miners were in fact immigrants at the time. It also goes against the miners statement at the beginning that they are referred to as 'black-faced' because in the mines they are all covered in coal dust and can't tell
the difference in ethnicity anyway. Cant' help but feel that was a little agenda push there. I think it's still worth a one time watch if you like Lovecraftian horror. Just be prepared the second half will be a bit of a letdown.