Theme: Centre of the Earth and Underground Adventures

This refers to adventures that take place underground. Ever since Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), writers and filmmakers have been engaging in a variety of excursions into the underground, revealing it to be filled with lost worlds and cities, prehistoric life and even finding the geologically absurd notion of a Hollow Earth there.

There have been multiple screen adaptations of Journey to the Center of the Earth and a variety of other works venturing into underground Lost Worlds. Other films deal with creatures and lifeforms that emerge from the underground.

There have also been fantasy works that imagine the centre of the Earth as a Fantasy Otherworld or peopled by goblins and trolls. In science-fiction works, the underground can sometimes be a place where humanity relocates after an apocalypse renders the surface world uninhabitable.

The 2000s brought a spate of spelunking films dealing with a realistic exploration of the underground and cave networks and featuring encounters with Troglodytes. Also included here are works set in sewers and underground railway lines, which on a number of occasions become venues for horror films and monster movies.