"We're soldiers, not fucking archeologists."
A squad of Special Forces soldiers assigned to rescue a hostage in Afghanistan stumble upon a mysterious tunnel leading to a terrifying Eldritch Abomination.
Directed by Jerome Chen, based on a short story by Alan Baxter. The voice cast is comprised of Joe Manganiello (Coulthard), Jai Courtney (Spencer), Stanton Lee (Dilman), Jeff Schine (Gladstone), and Christian Serratos (Harper).
Tropes:
- All There in the Script:
- Sarge's name is Coulthard and the second victim is named Gladstone according to the credits.
- Subtitles and the end credits clear up the ambiguity of the ending. Harper's whispers are described as "alien language" and Debra Wilson is listed as "Possessed Harper".
- Ambiguous Ending: It's not made entirely clear if Kate simply was driven insane, successfully fended off the Eldritch Abomination's mind control by destroying her eyes and ears, or released it and then went insane. Debra Wilson being listed as "Possessed Harper" in the credits hints toward the last option.
- Attack Drone: The spiders are of mechanical variety and seem to be an automated defensive system.
- Black Speech: Harper is last seen whispering nonsense which is described as "Alien language" in the subtitles.
- Body Horror: Dilman gets gnawed upon so heavily, his torso bursts and all the organs just slide outside. That without mentioning parts of his skull being exposed. And he's still alive.
- Bottomless Magazines: Averted; all soldiers repeatedly have to reload their guns while fighting off the horrors they encounter, and once the group is down to just Harper and Sarge, they are almost completely out of ammo, with Harper just having her sidearm and Sarge a single grenade.
- Brainwashed and Crazy:
- As damaged as he might be prior, Sarge goes full Ax-Crazy after being mind-raped by the being inside the structure.
- Kate eventually gets overwhelmed by the creature, plucking her own eyes out and mutilating her ears.
- Compelling Voice: The being keeps repeating its one and only command. It's enough to break Sarge within seconds.Release me...
- Cosmic Horror Story: A group of soldiers end up in a cave that leads to a prison containing an Eldritch Abomination that will destroy the world if it's unleashed. Yeah, the story has all the makings of one.
- Counting Bullets: Kate openly contemplates keeping the last round she has for relatively painless suicide, after witnessing the rest of the squad being torn to shreds. She ultimately doesn't go through with this.
- Eaten Alive: Beaumont gets swarmed and eaten by the tiny spiders within seconds.
- Eldritch Abomination: Imprisoned inside an ancient temple is a colossal green-skinned entity with multiple eyes, a cephalopodic head, and bat-like wings, making it a dead ringer for Cthulhu. Sarge is seemingly compelled to approach it, and making eye contact gives Harper agonizing visions of it destroying human civilization.
- Eldritch Location: The massive structure inside the improbably huge cave, emitting a Pillar of Light. It's a prison for an Eldritch Abomination, no less.
- Final Girl: Harper is the only one surviving the mission.
- Five Rounds Rapid: The targets the soldiers face are either too small, too numerous or too big for their firearms to be effective.
- Gender Flip: Harper replaces a male character named Paul Brown in the short story.
- Good All Along: The devouring arachnids and spiked rollers? Measures to keep the Cthulhu-like Eldritch Abomination imprisoned, if admittedly extreme measures.
- Immune to Bullets: The imprisoned abomination. When Harper shoots it, nothing happens - there are no sound or visual cues that the bullets even hit at all; no ricochet pings or flashes, no visible indentations, no squelching or cushioning sounds, nothing.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Despite being of Greek origins, Harper strongly resembles her voice-actress, Christian Serratos.
- Mercy Kill: Sarge puts a bullet in the head of Gladstone when he gets swarmed.
- Military Science Fiction: Of the "cosmic horror" variety.
- Mind Rape: The Eldritch Abomination proceeds with brain-fucking the remaining soldiers, offering them horrific visions and forcing them to release it, with the implication the pain will only end if they comply.
- Only Sane Woman: Harper is the only person that fully recognizes the insanity of their situation and that they should stay away from whatever is inside the otherworldly structure, rather than delve deeper into it.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Harper delivers a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man to Spence this way when he has a breakdown and kneels to pray, rather than continue running.God is dead. Embrace the suck. We've gotta move!
- Sickly Green Glow: Whatever that green goo on the cave walls really was, it's green and it glows, foreshadowing that anything beyond the tunnels couldn't be pleasant.
- Shooting Superman: Harper wastes the rest of her bullets on the gigantic abomination, possibly out of desperation. Had she saved one for herself, as she suggested earlier, she'd probably have been better off.
- Shooting the Swarm: The soldiers respond to the swarm of tiny spiders the only way they know, by opening fire on them. It only takes out a couple of the spiders since there are simply too many, and they are forced to retreat.
- Sociopathic Soldier: Sarge is of the Broken variety. Despite their crazy situation, he starts sniping on the insurgents in the distance, who are of absolutely zero threat to him, but technically are still enemies. He also is the most ruthless and desensitized of the squad, being able to move on with the fact other soldiers are dying around in gruesome ways. He even refuses to back out of the cave after they find the hostage dead, despite the fact that rescuing him was their original mission.
- The Squadette: Kate Harper is the only female in the squad and also their Combat Medic.
- Stripped to the Bone: The tiny spiders that guard the tunnels can do this to any human in seconds. When the soldiers investigate the tunnel, they find the skeletons of the hostage they came to rescue and several of his captors.
- Tempting Fate: A soldier shouts, "Give me your hand!" when trying to pull another soldier free of the spiders, only to find himself clutching a severed hand.
- Token Religious Teammate: Spence is praying for his own soul when things get FUBAR. Harper and Sarge are not religious, with Harper telling him to get a move on and "embrace the suck".
- Women Are Wiser: Harper manages to be not only the only sane person around, but also resist the commands of the Eldritch Abomination ... at least for a while.
- Working-Class Hero: As Sarge points out, the protagonists are soldiers, not "fucking archaeologists". Unlike typical cases, this lack of sophistication and simple-mindedness leads to their misfortune, rather than success.
