Don’t be deterred by this Russian flick and it’s admittedly slow start to build up its central protagonist, Russian epidemiologist Anya Federova (Milena Radulovic) from smart but failed scientist out to prove herself into full on action guru.

Inspired by the real location of the Kola Superdeep Borehole, (one of Russia’s experiments to bore to the Earth’s core, which at its deepest reaches 12, 262 meters down), Anya gets the opportunity to redeem herself when a supposed viral outbreak has occurred in a Secret underground research facility.

Set in 1984 Russia, The Superdeep evokes the stark and oppressive nature that woke out of The Cold War era.

As soon as Anya arrives with a squad of soldiers to find out what has happened at the facility and is charged with retrieved with finding some samples of the unknown disease which appears to be infecting all who work at the facility.

They are greeted by Dr. Grigoriev, the head researcher at the facility but it soon becomes apparent that he has an ulterior motive and refuses to allow them access to to the lowest level of the facility, trapping them on one of the other levels.

It then becomes a race against time to prevent the spread of the infection from reaching the surface and potentially wiping out all of humanity in the process.

The Diagnosis:

There are some nice little elements at play here, especially with the virus that is threatening the characters. It’s essentially a fungal type of entity that infests it’s hosts and shows signs of high functioning intelligence.

The idea behind this is a worthy one and keeps the audience entertained along with some decent effects to ground the film and support the believability of the film

Where it does fall down however is in some of the dialogue and action points that slip into predictability all too often.

It is still entertaining however and Radulovic’s performance and portrayal of Anya is strong enough to keep you invested til the end.

-Saul Muerte