The Descent (movie Review)

Who would think you could make a horror movie with six British girls participating in adventurous sports and not have even ONE lesbian scene? The story of this movie is six young women enter into a cave for an adventurous weekend after the one year anniversary of a car accident that killed the daughter and husband of the main character named Sarah. The beginning of the film starts off with creepy shots here and there, constant false imagery and paranoid surrealism where you are constantly tricked with the old, bait and pull gag, just when you think something scary is going to happen..IT DOESNT!

BOO! Ah, there it goes. Were introduced to these adventurous gals initially from their white water rafting expedition, and then they face the ultimate rush of cave spelunking. A rag tag group of women come together, some like adventure, some know caves, some just like to live dangerously and careless but it is all of these faults which befall the victims towards the end of the film. The women are led down into a cave by the adventurous Juno, this woman is very brave but sometimes foolish. Her philosophy is that if there is no risk then there is no fun involved. The risk that she first pulls with her group is by not bringing a map guide of the tunnel system in which she has taken her friends in to explore. Then she even admits she acquired an even BIGGER risk by bringing her friends into a cave system that is not only the one that they thought it was, but a cave system that has never been explored before.

Well the trick is on Juno, explorers had in fact gone through the cave system once, supposedly over a hundred years ago. They happen to discover an old spelunkers spike as the girls travel across a rather deep trench. Whether its from delusions, cave paintings or the dark Sarah happens to hear a little girl giggling and sees strange pale men scurrying about. Sarah suggests that they get the white creature thing on their side to help them find their way out of the tunnel. But, if you saw what these things looked like, who the Hell would want a ravenous Gollum to be their tour guide?

Yeah, thats right these weird bat-boys rejects from the Weekly World News start to appear throughout the cave system. Just when you think they are going to help you out, like they did with Bilbo on the way towards Mount Doom, these lil Crawlers scurry about and tear out the jugulars of the girls. Mass panic ensues; the girls scatter about, except for Juno, who stands strong by not only killing one of the Crawlers but her best friend by accident. They all become paranoid over one another and the friendships become dwindled down to the pure basic instinct of survival. These girls go from becoming the best of friends to muttering such lines of, Dont trust Juno or Her screaming is going to bring a hundred of those things down here. But as long as its not on my head Ill be safe.

The remainder of the film becomes homage to the basic element of survival. Sarah goes through the hugest transition of all from being this cowardly, scatterbrained, paranoid girl still struggling with the loss of her daughter and husband into a blood thirsty savage warrior chick. She gets drenched in a blood pool, kills her best friend with a rock, pushes a Crawlers eyeballs in with her thumbs and jabs another creature with a sharpened chunk of a deers antler. Juno roams around as the main heroine trying to lead everyone out of the cave, but she has inadvertently practically turned everyone against her. Especially; when Sarah finds out that Juno was fucking around with her husband a year or so back. There are also a final pair of girls that are hiding within a rocky crag cuddled up next to another trying to avoid any Crawler from eating them. Because, the Crawlers are blind and can only find their prey from their extra sense of hearing like Daredevil.

Finally, I leave you, the little people, with this question to whom that have seen the film. Did we need to have the Crawler creatures to make this film frightening? In my honest and humble opinion I didnt think we did. In fact, when these things came about with no true explainable origin, it was when the film, jumped the shark. The film is a thriller on the sole fact that I have never felt more claustrophobic in a film. I think an initial critic made the quote that it was the scariest horror thriller since Alien. But just muttering that film over and over in the trailers I think creates a subliminal effect on the viewer. To make any similarities between Ridley Scotts classic 1978 haunted house in outer space tale with connections to six chicks that go spelunking are few and far between. To me, I think the only connection was the feeling of the tight enclosed spaces all through the corridors of the caves, much like the tight hallways found in Alien (especially when Dallas is creeping about with a flame thrower). My heart was pounding so much, in such a fear, that I felt the girls terror of being stuck in a cave-in. But when you start throwing ghastly crawling and clawing bat boys at me then its a bit too much. Then it falls into the thriller-chiller category.

That stuff was just as entertaining as well. There was PLENTY of gore and nastiness for me to be entertained. In fact, I cant wait for the future un-cut release of the dvd that should be three times as gory. If any of you fans of the horror genre are familiar with the writer/director Neil Marshall, whom I had seen his previous film of Dog Soldiers. In fact, people criticize about British actors in films, I tried to plead with them if they want true British Horror then they should see Dog Soldiers which is like a mix of Evil Dead and The Howling but with G.I. Joe-esque characters. If you saw how Marshalls werewolves ripped through their prey the Crawlers do just the same. Again, I dont think I would necessarily need the Crawler beasts; I would be just as happy with some sorta psycho-thriller chiller when one of the girls goes crazy, rips apart her friends and eats them.