When we first meet our heroes in this horror / thriller ‘Stag Night’, Mike (Kip Pardue) our main hero, is outside of some sleazy New York bar on the phone with his fiancé who becomes concerned about her man’s safety when Mike informs her that his brother Tony (Breckin Meyer) is amongst the partygoers at this bachelor party. It seems Tony is a troublemaker. You know that guy in these movies, because that’s the guy that makes these movies happen. This is the guy who always causes a ruckus forcing our crew to make a left turn instead of a right, go up instead down or walk instead catching cab… that guy. The fiancé despises the brother so much that she doesn’t even want him in the wedding. Now we got a problem because I can’t marry this woman now. My brother’s trouble too but he’s my bro and he would always come before my girl. Not my wife… by a girlfriend or a fiancé? All the time. That being said, in retrospect Mike really should’ve left his brother at home this night.

So the troublemaking brother gets the crew thrown out of this club but instead of shutting it down, Mike’s boy Carl (Scott Adkins) knows of a better club uptown somewhere, so with their other friend Joe (Karl Geary) in tow, they hop on a subway to parts unknown. On this subway are a couple of cuties pies who I believe worked at this club they got tossed out of as strippers. There’s Michelle (Sarah Barrand) and Brita (Vanessa Shaw) with Carl zeroing in on the friendly Michelle and the troublemaking brother trying to get his groove on with the angry, mace packing Brita. We already know that Mike is engaged and we will be informed that the fourth party member, Joe, is married with a beautiful baby girl whose picture he uses as his cell phone wallpaper. Damn Joe, we hardly knew you.

Not surprisingly the troublemaking brother causes a ruckus forcing our crew off of this subway in the middle of some New York Tunnel of which they can’t find a way out of, but fortunately for them there are some rather helpful Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers who are more than willing to show them the way… to their deaths! Mayhem, Chaos and Bloodletting shall ensue.

As this movie starts rolling I see my main man Scott Adkins is in this movie, and while his name comes after the title as opposed to Kip Purdue whose name is before the title which is a good indicator that Adkins won’t be seeing daylight in this movie, still I am thinking some underground cannibal is going to catch a couple of solid round house kicks straight to the head from our kung fu master. Then one of our cannibals shows up and I know it is about to be on and then… damn… that was disappointing. Why even have Scott Adkins in your movie if he’s not going kick anybody’s ass?

Despite that disappointment ‘Stag Night’ wasn’t bad at all. Admittedly there is no shortage of movies featuring young people getting lost in parts unknown while being hunted by deformed cannibals, but usually these movies take place in Kentucky. At least writer / director Peter A. Dowling had the foresight of thought to stick his stock characters and stock storyline in a New York subway which does separate his film slightly from the genre, if only slightly.

And we do mean ‘stock’ just like a Chevy Malibu right off the assembly line, at least as far as the characters go and the way the story progresses. The stripper with the heart of gold, her best friend the whore, the trouble making brother and poor Joe, a character whose fate was sealed the minute he showed us the picture of his baby girl. Our villains were fairly stock as well considering that they were the usual super fast, super strong, super filthy deceptively smart cannibalistic humanoids with the lone exception that it did bring to mind an image of the Geico Cavemen gone really, really bad.

Where ‘Stag Night’ manages to overcome this standardization is that the subway tunnels do make for a very good, tense and foreboding atmosphere, it has a cast of actors that is far more talented and capable than we are used to seeing in a movie of this genre and Dowling keeps the suspense high and action brisk. The movie only slows down on occasion to catch its breath and then it takes off again.

I enjoyed ‘Stag Night’ despite the fact that it really brings nothing new to the table. It is a movie that takes what has been done time and time again but it does do it entertainingly well. We would’ve liked to have seen Scott Adkins do some kung fu on some cannibal ass, but I guess you can’t have everything.