Stay Out Stay Alive

After an earthquake uncovers an abandoned goldmine, a hiker falls in and is trapped, forcing friends to grapple with a moral dilemma that spirals into madness.

So there are five hikers gadding about amongst the beautiful redwood trees when they, quite literally, stumble into an abandoned mine. It's a gold mine - and there is still some left for them to plunder. Cloud nine is where these kids are heading until an earth tremor sees poor old "Donna" (Sage Mears) trapped under a rock. The remaining four must now prioritise her escape before shock or worse sets it - or maybe they should just carry on digging out the gold? Personally I know what I'd do, as this group of rather venal and shallow characters make maximum use of a fairly pathetic script and a weak storyline to eek this out for almost ninety minutes of mediocre cinema. As an adventure it really fails to ignite and the angsty melodrama that auteur Dean Yurke imposes on us is little better than nicely photographed, barely audible, frequently hysterical, drivel. Maybe the gold was cursed? Maybe the viewer was too?