THE CAVE
PG-13, 97 minutes

In 1979, Ridley Scott made “Alien” about a bunch of astronauts being eaten by a monster in the twisty tunnels of their enormous, dark spaceship. In 2005, a gaggle of Hollywood nobodies made “The Cave,” about a bunch of cavers being eaten by several monsters in the twisty tunnels of an enormous, dark cave.

The cave full of horrible monsters not only has its entrance capped by a church, the church itself has been buried in an avalanche. This sends a pretty clear “Keep Out” message, but there’s no deterring scientists intent on being eaten by monsters.

Caving is the triathlon of science: It involves scuba diving, rock climbing, and camping and the mechanics of this are kind of cool. But then come the naked, slimy mole rats. Followed by the slithery albino eels. And, finally, the giant, man-eating monsters that promptly begin jumping on the cavers and trying to stuff them into crevices that are way too small, with predictably lethal results.

The rest of the movie should be a white-knuckle race against time as the cavers try to escape death before their supplies run out. But the pace never rises above a brisk slog. Piper Perabo does a terrific Lara Croft imitation and gets the best scene in the movie, but as for the rest of the actors, who cares? They’re monster chow.

The caves are a bit of a disappointment, as well. We’re told that they’re an endless labyrinth, but lost cavers keep bumping into one another as if they’re trapped in a crowded hotel lobby.

– Grady Hendrix

ETERNAL
R, 108 minutes

The new Canadian movie “Eternal” is about that age-old enemy of mankind: the high-fashion lesbian vampire from Europe. This scrumptiously trashy flick is dominated by Elizabeth Kane (Caroline Neron) a straight-to-video-looking blonde who is actually the immortal 17th-century Hungarian serial killer, Erszebet Bathory.

Kane must bathe regularly in the blood of young ladies to keep her eternal youth; filling the tub for these blood baths is a logistical nightmare, which falls on the shoulders of her hench-wench, Irina (Victoria Sanchez). But as the old saying goes: Be careful who you kill in your quest for eternal life.

Brash Irina doesn’t listen, and Ms. Kane winds up bathing in the remains of one Ms. Pope, wife of Vice Detective Raymond Pope (Canadian kickboxer Conrad Pla), whose brash manner and suspiciously geometric five o’clock shadow makes him catnip for the ladies. All kinds of trashy eroticism and bloodshed ensue as Ms. Kane and Detective Pope engage in a lethargic game of cat-and-mouse.

Berserk little details abound, such as Irina’s hobby of driving around town and biting young boys to death when she’s not stomping her foot and petulantly whining “When do I get to kill girls?” No one seems to notice the bodies piling up all over Quebec. Later an Italian police officer who strongly resembles Chef Boyardee guides Detective Pope to a decadent Venetian orgy that looks like a remaindered Cirque du Soleil act.

The two directors (it took two!) never once catch on to how tacky this all is, and god bless ’em for it.

– Grady Hendrix

WALL
unrated, 95 minutes

Documentarian Simone Bitton seems to be an interesting person; her documentary, “Wall,” is not an interesting movie. Ms. Bitton, an Arab Jew, feels a conflict in her dual heritage and was distressed when Israel began building a security fence to protect itself. So she documents the construction of the wall, using long passages of silence interspersed with interviews that take place mostly off-camera.

While Ms. Bitton’s documentary is a thoughtful one, its snail pace and repetitive nature makes it a challenge to sit through. Immediately preceding the opening titles, Ms. Bitton presents us with an almost seven-minute sequence of construction crews building the wall, accompanied on the soundtrack by wailing Mediterranean chants in real time. Long, drawn-out scenes that mirror this one follow.

Such a meditative method may be meant to provoke internal introspection; instead, it tries our patience. Ms. Bitton also fails to address the reasons why the Israeli government might want to build such a controversial structure, making this an extremely biased piece of work.

Where Ms. Bitton has better luck is capturing the human angle, eliciting comments from both sides of the conflict. That the Arabs are opposed to the wall won’t be a surprise to too many people, but Ms. Bitton also finds Israelis who say the wall is eerily reminiscent of ghettos that Jews were forced into throughout European history. She also finds a group of Palestinians who help build the wall, despite their objections to it, because the pay is good. A few more of such personal stories, and a lot less physical wall-building, would have done the film much good.

– Edward Goldberger