Great acting and directing, but the writing had issues, and I really could've done without that long dragged out constant "coal miner" song.
Novice writer/director (majority of his films all shorts) Eddie Mensore did an excellent job with the directing/camera work, especially considering the confined spaces he had to work with. The cinematography was outstanding.
The writing however had some issues. This screenplay should've been edited to a short, as the first half was basically slow and dragged out without much substance or character development -or- more time added with trimmed down unnecessary scenes and more character development and substance pertaining to what was actually happening/the conflict. I found it hard to follow how/why/what was happening in some scenes, thus convoluting the plot. The slow pacing didn't help either, as the 83 min runtime felt closer to 2 hours. The religious undertones were also a little overbearing and felt forced into the writing. The score was great, but the music was bland and overplayed (the "coal miner" song).
The acting however was outstanding by all the miners, and as realistic and convincing as it gets, with the exception of the female supervisor, who I thought looked like a deer staring into headlights in some scenes.
Nevertheless, the decent second-half suspense somewhat made up for the slow burn dragged out first-half of the film. Aside from the outstanding acting, I liked Cutterhead (2018) writing a little more. It's a 7/10 from me.
