The Descent

A few nights back, my husband and I took our son to blockbuster. He ran up and down the aisles, me chasing behind him, as my husband picks us out a few movies. We ended up leaving with a Mickey Mouse Flick, The Black Dahlia and a movie called The Descent. The first one we watched, was The Descent. My husband said it looked good, and resembled a movie we had seen called The Cave. I myself hadn't liked that movie. I found out later that The Cave was actually a bit of a rip-off of the movie The Descent.

The Descent came out in 2005 but I believe it was just released to DVD fairly recently. It sounded scary enough. A cave exploring expedition gone wrong, trapped in an underground cave with no way out. Lots of scary things come to mind. Narrow passageways, getting stuck in one,claustrophobia, no food or water, the batteries in their headlights going out, etc.

As we began to watch it, the opening scene starts out with a bunch of young women in their mid to late 20s wrapping up a weekend of white water rafting. As the main character drives away with her husband and young daughter, out of nowhere a van comes flying in their direction and slams on it's breaks, sending some pipes off of the top of the van shooting through their vehicles windshield.

We next see the young woman waking up in the hospital, finding out her husband and young daughter were both killed in the accident. All of a sudden the movie skips ahead a year or so and we find our main character meeting up with her girlfriends again, deciding they should all go on a spelunking expedition. After a night of heavy drinking and girl talk, they start off on their journey. As they park their vehicle off to the side of the road and walk away from it, you almost can sense that none of them will ever see it again.

You get that same feeling when the daylight disappears as they all slowly repel down to hole into the cave.

Things begin to pick up at this point. The claustrophobia for the viewer beings to set in as they squeeze themselves through tight, dark tunnels. All of a sudden the main character gets stuck in one of the tunnels. She beings to panic and can't breath, saying she can't move. I myself was literally freaking out in my mind thinking my god, this could actually happen, and I would be doing the same thing, FREAKING OUT. Her friends finally calm her down enough to pull her through the tunnel and as her feet hit the top of the tunnel, the tunnel itself collapses behind her, covering the only way they know how to escape. At first, the majority of the girls do not panic, as one of the girls had a book that had the entire caves outlined. Then the girl reveals that she left the book behind and that however, that didn't matter, because she had lied to them about what caves they were in. Instead of being in a well known cave, like she told them they were in, she had led them down into unmarked territory.

I won't give away anymore of the plot, as I have given away enough already. However, my main complaint about this movie, is that they should have kept it low-key, and not added any supernatural /mythical elements to it like they do further into the plot. It was scary enough as it was, them being trapped in that cave like that. Psychologically scary. Instead of keeping it like that, they just turned it into another cheesy monster flick. There I go giving away more of the plot. You will have to watch it for yourself to know what I mean. It wasn't a horrible movie, just not that great.