Alicia I love this movie so much

LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

BruceKGardner A fascinating concept: Moscow has an underground entrance to Hell that must be blocked off soon to prevent shadowy demons coming into the city. Underground, through tunnels and subways, are the homeless who, if they wander too far, become food for the dark, although this is left to the imagination, largely, through acting and sound that disturb the imagination. Before Hell is closed off by a Muscovite gang, led by Val Kilmer, unorthodox priest Father Owen (Vincent Gallo) must look for an anthropologist who has been seeking the way from the labyrinth back up to a church and is a lost, lone explorer. A small group of rescuers is led by Owen (including guide Joacquin Almeida (Clear and Present Danger), and the elfin Oksana Akinshina (The Bourne Supremacy), who turns out to have a prophetic significance for ghosts of children who were hidden under the church in 1920 with a guardian nun whose spirit advises them, including a lovely little girl in white who is like the good fairy while the other ghost-children, dodging demons, are less congenial, as the hapless rescuers find out. Following the advice of underground boss Tolstoy (Joss Ackland: K19 - The Widowmaker). they penetrate into danger and imminent madness following maps to a maze that don't quite make sense. There is a possibility of happy ending implied, but it is not definite, which some watchers will find disturbing. The hand-held camera-work in the dark is only confusing until you realize that it is exactly what the characters are going through, as they are taken by the darkness and the demons and pursued by the disappointed children who want to be free in the overground.It was a difficult task for actors but they resist a temptation to act big to overcome the limitations of darkness. The discontinuity is real; the unexpectedness is real; the real-time moments are real. Even the talking-to-himself of the object of the search, anthropologist Sergey (Rade Serbedzija: Shooter and 24) feels real. Amidst fantasy, the human situation is real, with no "National Treasure" moments leading to clichéd millions of dollars to send an acquisitive audience home with a warm fuzzy feeling in their slightly-emptier wallets. It is for friendship or fees that the little group go down to the underworld, and the survival of a few - if they do survive - is also very realistic.Vincent Gallo claims to love America and detest Europeans but this film shows his European roots, in the darkness of an older world of faith and conflict that exists just as much under Los Angeles as under the grim fairy-cake of Moscow. A mixture of languages, Russian and English, is also realistic in its awkwardness. This film deserves to become a bit of a cult. It may seem partly Blair Witch Project, or partly film-noir, but it is all worthy, aided by brave, fine actors. And brave they had to be, for a member of the crew died during filming. If you want Hollywood, watch Hollywood. "Moscow Zero" is a brave movie, whatever the faults (real or imagined) rude armchair critics shout about (who have never done anything in their lives but drink coke, eat popcorn and switch on a DVD that was made by somebody else). One critic must have spent hours writing a review that bewailed his 'lost 82 minutes' of life. Blood, sweat and tears movies are wasted on such shallow egotists.I found Moscow Zero fascinating. Even experiments have a purpose in a brave, real world. This deserves respect. I'm glad I have the DVD: I intend to see this movie, again and again, taking in all the details.Of course, it may not be an entirely happy memory for cast and crew, but it is not unknown for those who make a movie not to realize its significance. I may be a minority but I think this one's going to last.Even if it doesn't, here is one who will take it down from the shelf.

ffflamingoes The gates of Hell opened up and spit out this film, then closed again.Watching this movie makes me appreciate other movies I have seen, like all other movies. Nothing makes sense in this movie.It would really take too long to mention all the plot problems. In fact, except as a warning, it really isn't worth wasting some of the nearly infinite space available on the internet writing about this film.From now on, I will check IMDb before watching any film.Hot darn, IMDb is forcing me to write more about this film. I guess I should warn you about Edison Force while I am at it. But if you had to chose between the two, pick Edison Force.

NateWatchesCoolMovies Moscow Zero is a chilly little subterranean ghost story, and a favourite for me. It god critically shredded by the few people who did see it, and quickly forgotten. I think this may be because of odd marketing,and the cultural rifts in different areas of both the world, and cinema. It was marketed in North America as a supernatural shocker starring Val Kilmer, which was a cheap shot to fans and in fact false advertising. Kilmer is in it, for maybe ten minutes, and is very good, but the story isn't his. It's also supernatural, but in a far more subtle, ambiguous and inaccessible way that the ADHD-ridden audiences over here just aren't used to. In short, it's very European, and they just seem to have a better handle on the intuition it takes to make an atmospheric chiller than anyone else, also seeming to be more connected with ghost lore and the spirit realm. The story concerns a priest named Father Owen (hollywood's resident alien Vincent Gallo, playing it dead straight here). He has traveled to Moscow I hopes of finding his friend Professor Sergey (Rade Serbedzija), who has descended into ancient catacombs and endless tunnels below the surface of the city in hopes of finding a lost artifact hidden during wartime. He joins up with a group of guides and Moscow natives including the beautiful Lubya (Oksana Akinshina) and a tracker named Yuri (Joaquim De Almeida) to traverse the underside of the city and find his friend. There are long, eerie scenes of Sergey wandering around the dimly lit labyrinth, pursuing his scholarly goal and talking to himself as strange shadows and far away whispers follow him around, gradually letting the viewer know that he's not alone. Owen and his team rendezvous with Tolstoy (Joss Ackland) the elderly leader of a tribe of tunnel dwellers who won't go below a certain level of the catacombs, who provides a map. Then they go deeper. Kilmer plays Andrey, a Russian dude who runs a gang that are in control of opening and closing a deep fissure gate that is said to lead to a hell like place. He's relaxed, in both demeanor and the Russian accent, but he's clearly having fun in one of his more character type roles. The catacombs have a haunted feel to them, and indeed there are ghosts, but not presented in the way you might think. The way the human characters see them is quite different from how they see themselves, and how the audience sees them, which is a nice touch. The story keeps itself mysterious, right up until it's puzzling, creepy conclusion, buy I prefer that open ended, almost experimental style over desperate attempts to scare us. It's atmospheric, strange, unique, thick with ideas and altogether a bit of brilliance. Definitely an acquire taste, though.

mario_c MOSCOW ZERO is a really dark, mystical and supernatural film. The plot is very straight to follow since it's just about a quest to find SERGEI (played by Rade Serbedzija) an old friend of the father OWEN (played by Vincent Gallo) that went to the catacombs of Moscow alone. The entire movie is passed in there. Though the film has a very open ending, which is, by the way, very well connected to the mysterious and mystical ambiance that is always present… What I appreciated the most in the film was precisely this mystical and supernatural ambiance of this story and the way it was shot. It has a great cinematography, creating very dark and claustrophobic scenarios. The soundtrack is also good, because it also has mysterious, dark, melancholic and melodic music, like a ghost story must have! One other detail that I also appreciated was the fact of the demons were characterized only as shadows, as a dark light in the underworld… I found it so much better than the traditional way of characterize demons as little monsters with sharpened teethes, horns and a back tail… I think this film is very well produced, though I agree it's a bit slow sometimes and could have been more suspenseful. However I also think this melancholy present in the plot and the soundtrack fits perfectly in a dark and mystical story like this.The acting is reasonably good, but I only would like to mention the Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida, playing YURI character… It was a surprise to me hearing him speaking some lines in Russian, but he's a "box of surprises" anyway… I also would like to say that I think this movie is too much underrated here on IMDb. I Liked this film, especially because of its ambiance as I said before, and I found pretty absurd that a user can say things like this: "There are two shameful reviews in IMDb promoting this movie and they are typically fake, written by users with only one review in this site". Just because he has more than 3000 reviews he thinks he's opinion is better than anyone else's! It's really sad… My final vote to this different but good film is 7/10.