Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a horror, thriller film from 2020, titled The Superdeep.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
In 1984, epidemiologist Anna Fedorova loses her research associate when the testing of
a vaccine goes wrong.
Feeling guilty for having authorized testing on humans without preliminary or animal testing
first, Anna wants to shut down the project, but Colonel Yury Morozov stops her.
Shutting down the project wouldn't help her feel any better, and the soldiers in Africa
need her: if she gives up now, her friend would've died for nothing.
Months later, Anna is spending New Year's Eve with family and friends who congratulate
her for having come up with a vaccine so fast.
Their dinner is interrupted by a phone call from Morozov, who needs Anna for a special
mission.
There's been an incident at the Kola Superdeep Borehole - some noises have been heard and
people disappeared, so the station has been shut down and will be sealed in twenty-four
hours.
The head of research has been denounced for hiding data on a supposedly unknown disease,
and that's why they need Anna.
After Morozv promises her full credit for the discovery and the position of head of
the Military Biological Defense Institute, Anna accepts and gets ready to leave.
In the morning, Anna arrives at the station together with Morozov and a group of soldiers
led by Major Sergey Mikheev and his right hand Egorov.
As soon as they land though, they already encounter their first problem: a scientist
has escaped the station with a grenade in hand that he detonates as soon as he reaches
the helicopter.
The group hears a buzzing in their ears for a few seconds, but luckily they're all okay.
Anna wastes no time and goes to check the scientist's body to gather a sample while
Sergey teases her for her accent, trying to guess where it's from.
The sample however, turns to dust as soon as Anna puts the lid on the test tube, and
she can't help noticing a weird red glow on the body as well.
One of the station's guards explains that the scientist went crazy as soon as he reached
the surface, and he was so strong not even three soldiers could stop him.
The rest of the staff is being evacuated now, so Anna goes to take samples from them before
they leave.
One of the men tells her everyone's dead down there and the disease is a lie, so she should
run back to her family.
All the miners seem fine, but the one with the scar saw something that has scared him,
so Anna does think it may be more than a disease.
Afterward, Anna, Morozov, and the squad of soldiers enter the station with head scientist
Pyotr Kuznetsov and Dr. Dmitry Grigoriev.
Anna tries to ask some questions about this mysterious infection, but Grigoriev refuses
to give her details because he thinks they're all here with an ulterior motive.
He'll only help them enough so that they can get their sample and guarantee a safe evacuation
for all the survivors, no more.
Anna wants to know why he even locked up the survivors in the first place, but Grigoriev
doesn't answer that either.
The group makes it to the elevator, where Grigoriev has to be careful when imputing
the access code because getting it wrong three times makes the elevator crash as a security
measure.
Thankfully he gets it right on the third try, so the party begins descending into the deepest
manmade hole in the world.
When they reach their floor though, the brakes don't respond, so Grigoriev depressurizes
the elevator and puts on an oxygen mask while the rest of the group passes out.
When they wake up a few moments later, Grigoriev has left with the elevator key.
It seems they've made it to the facility's resort, which is the area the staff lives
in most of the time.
The main research level is even lower and there is a second elevator that can take them
there, but they can't activate it without the key.
This area used to be crowded at all times, but now, they only find only two remaining
staff members: engineer Nikolay and Doctor Kira Vitalievna, who were left behind during
the initial evacuation.
Kira takes them to the lab so Anna can take samples from both and look at them in the
microscope, confirming neither of them is infected.
It seems Grigoriev had it all planned and they were left in this area on purpose because
it's clean from any possible signs of the disease, so they'll need to look for a proper
source elsewhere.
Speaking of Grigoriev, he reveals himself to Anna to ask her to take the team back to
the surface through the shafts and save themselves while they can because people should always
be the priority.
Anna calls the soldiers to capture him, but before they can reach him, Grigoriev escapes
using the elevator, only leaving a bloodstain on the door behind.
They decide to send a group of soldiers led by Egorov into the shaft, which they need
to force open because Grigoriev had sealed it up.
While the soldiers put on protective suits to withstand the incredibly high temperatures
of the lower levels, the shaft doors suddenly open on their own, revealing lab assistant
Olga Krylova looking rather sick after walking through the heat to reach them.
The soldiers rescue her and take her to the lab, then go down the shaft.
Before starting the check-up, Anna asks Olga some questions, but she remembers nothing
of what happened down there - she's also burning with fever, even though she says she's cold.
When Anna takes off her gown, she makes a disturbing discovery on Olga's back: it's
covered with disgusting mold-like growths, which Olga claims don't hurt, not even when
Anna makes a cut to take a sample.
While the soldiers report having found some kind of life in the lower level, Anna puts
the sample under the microscope and discovers it's a cellular parasite, some highly virulent
form of mold.
Fungi and mold are the least studied forms of life, and this one is unknown, so that's
enough for Morozov to end this operation and start heading back.
Nikolay begins working on the elevator's system to force it to come back, which will take
over an hour.
Sergey tries to contact his team again, but they seem to be in trouble at the sight of
something dangerous and don't answer their walkie-talkies anymore.
At that moment, Grigoriev contacts them through the speakers and tells them he had hoped they
would escape through the shafts, so now they leave him no choice.
Grigoriev proceeds to set off a bomb to seal them all within the facility as he asks for
forgiveness, and Anna is reminded of her own guilt related to the vaccine when the area
starts shaking around her because of the explosion.
In the lab, Olga's body begins to glow and she slowly loses control, blowing up the glass
and attacking Kira.
Meanwhile, Nikolay discovers that the explosion damaged the pressure pump and will cause the
facility to collapse within an hour.
He wants to find a way to get out and shows no care for the soldiers trapped in the lower
levels, earning him a punch from Sergey.
However, Morozov agrees that going back for those soldiers is too dangerous, so they'll
be leaving through the shafts.
Sergey goes with Anna to the lab to retrieve Olga and they find a very unpleasant surprise:
the entire place is covered with mold, and Olga is half melted to the floor but still
alive.
On the other side of the door, Morozov doesn't care that Anna is surrounded by contamination
without protection and orders her to take samples anyway.
When she and Sergey come closer though, Olga begins releasing a cloud of spores, so Sergey
runs out of the room and Anna steps back and grabs a mask to avoid breathing them in.
That's how she comes across Kira, who has been infected and mutated like Olga, and she
dies when her bones suddenly poke out.
Anna tries to leave the room and has another guilt-associated hallucination when she slips,
but this allows her to find a fire extinguisher.
She uses it to clean the air around her so she can open the door without the mold escaping,
and after closing it again, she asks Nikolay to use the extinguisher on her body to disinfect
her.
Afterward, Anna goes to check on Sergey, but it's too late: he's already infected and has
lost his sight.
When she tells everyone about Kira, Pyotr explains that it isn't supernatural - this
mysterious mold is like the fungus that takes over an ant and makes it go back to its nest
so it can release its spores and infect everyone else.
Anna asks Morozov to speak in private so she can tell him about her discovery: the mold
dies when exposed to cold and it's been using human bodies to survive in the upper area's
permafrost.
She wants to stay with Sergey to search for the last survivors while Morozov goes back
to the surface and calls a rescue team, but this isn't even an option: the facility will
be shut down in five hours, there's nobody coming.
Morozov orders everyone to suit up so they can leave, but at that moment, they receive
a message from Egorov asking them not to open the door even if it's for them.
After a long argument, Pyotr reminds them this is their only chance at survival, so
may as well open the door anyway.
They send three soldiers down the shaft to investigate first, but two quickly come back
after shooting at something big that tried to attack them yet they couldn't identify.
The third soldier also comes back without an arm, and he ends things with a knife right
before the group closes the door.
Whatever is in the shaft now knows they are there, so it begins slamming the door to try
to get out.
The group runs away and makes it to the back of the area to see the elevator finally arriving.
Nikolay begins working on a way to drop it down, hoping the emergency brakes will hold.
Sergey's body starts glowing and he knows he doesn't have much time left, so he decides
to stay behind with his men to try to stop the mysterious entity, which has finally broken
down the doors.
Anna, Nikolay, Pyotr, and Morozov get in the elevator and hold tight as it begins falling
down.
The pressure makes it hard for Nikolay to reach the brakes lever, so Anna has to leave
her seat and do it herself.
Fortunately, she pulls it just in time and the elevator safely lands on the lowest lever,
which is colder than they expected.
All the rooms are covered with frost, and a recording from a scientist tells them he
also figured out the mold is weak to the cold and the ice age must've kept it underground
all these years.
Sooner or later though, it'll figure out that the permafrost has an end and it could escape
- this thing has already learned to melt bodies together for warmth and power.
This is the reason why the group doesn't find any survivors: they're stuck on the wall in
a giant melted pile of mold that has died of cold.
Morozov takes the last suit and enters the two hundred degrees environment to try to
recover the elevator key from Grigoriev.
While they wait for him, Anna asks Nikolay and Pyotr not to say anything about this mold
when they return to the surface because it would bring more people to investigate, putting
humanity in danger.
Nikolay accepts, but Pyotr is hesitant because he had been hoping to make a big discovery
that put him on the map.
When Morozov takes too long to come back, Anna decides to enter the hot area next without
any protection, since in theory, the human body can survive there for a few minutes.
As blisters begin appearing on her body, Anna finds Morozov dead on the floor because the
suit had been sabotaged by Grigoriev.
At least he has the elevator key in his hand, so after seeing the mold glowing on the walls,
Anna takes the key and runs back inside.
Nikolay tries to help her, but Pyotr suddenly shoots his leg and demands to be given the
elevator key so he can go out and get the fame he deserves for this discovery.
They give him the key and Pyotr takes the second elevator with both of them, keeping
them at gunpoint.
When they return to the resort level, they go to the first elevator corridor to investigate,
and Pyotr tries to keep Anna behind so he can get into the elevator alone.
However, he's suddenly attacked by the strange entity from the shaft: it's a disgusting creature
made of the infected staff members that have been melted into one organism.
They're still alive and screaming while the creature kills Pyotr.
Anna runs away and hides in the mess hall, but the creature comes after her, so she grabs
a knife and enters the freezer.
There she gets an idea: she takes off most of her clothes and tosses a bucket of freezing
water on her body so her temperature is too cold for the mold to infect her.
Then she comes out and crawls under the creature to take the elevator key from Pyotr, who has
also been absorbed.
Locking the doors behind her, Anna rushes out of the mess hall and finds Nikolay so
they can escape together.
However, the creature finds them by breaking through the wall, so the pair runs away until
they reach the elevator and manage to push the doors closed right as the creature tries
to reach inside.
The elevator starts going up, but Nikolay and Anna have one last surprise waiting for
them: Sergey is also there with them, melting into the floor and begging them to do something
as he coughs out spores.
Anna stops the elevator because she doesn't want to take the mold outside, but Nikolay
doesn't want to die here and activates it again.
The two of them begin fighting over control of the elevator, and when Nikolay is about
to kill Anna, Sergey forces his body to do one last effort: he raises his arm and uses
the exposed bone to kill Nikolay first.
To show her gratitude, Anna tells Sergey that she's from Yugoslavia and kisses him before
getting to work on the elevator.
Anna remembers putting the wrong code three times will crash it, so she starts punching
numbers, which proves more difficult than it sounds because she's been infected too
and her body has started glowing, so she feels weak with pain.
The two first tries go slowly but well, but she barely puts half a fake code when the
elevator makes it to the surface, so she has to struggle against the grasp of the rescue
team to punch the final numbers.
The elevator starts the self-destruct sequence and falls down as Anna leaves with the new
team in a van.
Surrounded by soldiers, she takes the chance to steal a grenade from them and gets off
the vehicle as soon as the van leaves the facility.
Seeing more scientists are arriving, Anna approaches them and detonates the grenade,
matching the beginning of the story.