Under the Mountain

Starring Sam Neill, Tom Cameron, Sophie McBride. Directed by Jonathan King. M.

copyright 120db films

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Streamlining Maurice Gee's popular 1979 novel – which was adapted into a successful eight-episode TV series – into a 91-minute movie has produced a ragged result whose unevenness is more likely to be overlooked by an adolescent audience.

The story of twins helping a mysterious stranger try to stop aliens from destroying the world has early promise, some scary boogeymen and menacing moments before its story loosens its grip and then struggles to recover in the climax.

What Under the Mountain has going for it is a capable cast, Weta Workshop and several aerial panoramic shots of Auckland on a sunny day.

Newcomers Tom Cameron and Sophie McBride play bereaved teens Theo and Rachel, whose telepathic connection has been damaged by their mother's death.

Visiting relatives in Auckland, they not only notice a creepy old house on the other side of the lake but, at night of course, explore it.

They also meet the grizzled, enigmatic Mr Jones (Sam Neill), who needs their "twinness" to defeat aliens who are about to awaken planet-destroying monsters which are dormant under Auckland's seven volcanoes.

The story has plenty of scary, suspenseful potential, led by Oliver Driver as the alien leader Mr Wilberforce, who tends to talk like Boris Karloff, and supported by Weta's presentation of the aliens as slithering, slimy shapeshifters who look as if they could be progeny of a serpentine Medusa and the tentacled Davy Jones of Pirates of the Caribbean when they're not plodding forward like extras from Michael Jackson's Thriller.

But the musical score is too often detracting than enhancing in its exaggerated sledgehammer style: an earthquake's rumble sounds like a train roaring through a tunnel, a knocking at the door becomes a bam-bam-bam barrage of an artillery range, and kettledrum-thumping accompanies any alien appearance.

The story includes the usual disbelieving parents, who incredibly blame the teens for somehow melting a gaping hole in a door and who disregard their own son's witnessing of a miraculous vanishing act.

For light relief there's a randy teenager who's desperately trying to have sex with his girlfriend.

In the last 20 minutes director Jonathan King (Black Sheep) pumps up the action, while injecting the salutary message about strength in bonding, but it's too overheated, chaotic and silly to deliver the knockout punch the opening jabs, feints and crosses set up.

- © Fairfax NZ News