An accident during a mining expedition sends a team of scientists tumbling into an ancient, underground spaceship, where they inadvertently wake its sinister inhabitants.

SYNOPSIS:

As low woman on the totem pole, starry-eyed engineer RUTH FARWELL knows three things to be true: first, the company she works for, CoreTech Industries, is going to revolutionize the alternative energy business; second, a rare, powerful mineral called ulterium holds the key to realizing this dream; and third, she will have no part in any of it. On a five-mile journey down into the depths of the Earth, who needs a two-bit lab rat anyway?

Turns out CoreTech does, when Ruth’s boss unexpectedly falls ill and volunteers her for the expedition in his place. Accompanied by pilot GRACE, co-pilot JERRY, public relations guru CONWAY, weak-stomached intern COLIN, Russian laborers SERGEI and TIMUR, and fellow engineer PETER, Ruth descends to a vast subterranean cave in order to mine the rich ulterium deposit recently discovered there. All goes well…for about five minutes. Cave-ins just ruin everything, don’t they?

Tumbling down through several layers of earth, the team crashes through the hull of an ancient underground ship. The force of their fall breaks Jerry’s leg while simultaneously awakening the ship’s inhabitants: huge, hulking humanoids now mutated and enraged by millennia spent inside unstable stasis pods. And it isn’t long before the aliens turn their fury on these unexpected intruders.

Terrified and disoriented, Ruth stumbles blindly after the rest of the team, gratefully deferring to Grace’s leadership decisions. It takes Jerry and Colin being snatched up like fish on a lure for her to even consider picking up a weapon, and even then she can’t fathom joining the fight. But after Sergei and Timur fall for a fatal trap, and Grace is killed by friendly fire, Ruth realizes she won’t survive by hiding behind everyone else. It’s time to join the fight, battling alongside Peter and the useless, pigheaded Conway to reach the cave again.

Through blood and screams and one very unfortunate tumble by Conway, Ruth and Peter finally make it back to the CoreTech transport—only to discover its engines fatally damaged. Peter then makes one final sacrifice, blowing up the aliens and himself in order to whip Ruth back up to the surface. Grief-hardened and infuriated by the CEO’s calloused demands for the ulterium, Ruth finally coughs up the Koolaid and tosses the ulterium back down into the burning cave—a final, defiant salute to the lives lost to CoreTech’s selfish ambitions.

SUBTERRANEAN