When homeless people start disappearing, a journalist and a film crew set out to follow an underground labyrinth of tunnels in search of answers.
After watching Backrooms (2026): https://kaygazpro.com/backrooms-2026/, I felt compelled to revisit a few underrated similar horrors. My first stop was The Beach House (2019): https://kaygazpro.com/the-beach-house-2019/. The Tunnel is the next one. All three films are very different in execution, yet they evoke a surprisingly similar feeling: the fear of spaces we do not understand, places we were perhaps never meant to enter and the lack of knowledge of the world we thought we had conquered.
One of the most impressive aspects of The Tunnel is how convincingly it presents itself as reality. It operates as a mockumentary, complete with statistics, dates, interviews, statements, and official-looking information that, upon closer inspection, does not actually exist. The audience knows this. The filmmakers know this. Yet everyone willingly plays along because the story is told with such confidence that disbelief becomes irrelevant.
The found-footage cinematography also works remarkably well for most of the runtime. The camera movement feels motivated and natural, helping to maintain immersion. Admittedly, towards the climax, the shaking becomes so excessive that one could argue Dramamine pills should be included with the ticket price (even though there was no ticket). Still, the technique largely serves the atmosphere rather than distracting from it.
What I found fascinating, however, is the underlying fear the film explores. Humanity has always been terrified by what lies beneath. From ancient myths of the underworld and subterranean monsters to Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, and more recently films like (I am not revealing that one yet – my next stop), storytellers have repeatedly returned to the same unsettling idea: we believe we sit comfortably at the top of the food chain, yet there may be worlds beneath our feet operating by entirely different rules.
And what if those worlds do not care about us? Scriptwriters Enzo Tedeschi and Julian Harvey, and director Carlo Ledesma, tap directly into that fear. While humanity argues over politics, bureaucracy, and countless problems we could potentially solve through communication and cooperation, something else may be lurking below us, indifferent to our achievements and completely beyond our understanding.
That possibility is both exciting and horrifying. Because we have explored only a fraction of our oceans, cave systems, and underground environments. There remain places on this planet more mysterious than some distant stars. The film builds upon that uncertainty beautifully. What if we once found something beneath us and ultimately abandoned it? What if it was not hiding from us? What if it was waiting?
Despite the often shaky camera, these questions, and more, make The Tunnel worth the journey, and its execution perpetuates the brilliance of the Australian horror film school.
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