Review of Descent (2007) by Wade H — 31 Jul 2014

I love thrillers but hate horrors, I suppose that's why I loved exactly one half of this movie. (And I might as well say right now I'm going to spoil this film completely, so stop reading now if you don't like spoilers.) Honestly, the first half of this movie is one of the scarier films I've ever seen. It starts with the main character losing both her husband and her daughter in a tragic car accident. So we are already on edge because that seemed to come out of nowhere. This accident is then followed up with an intense scene where she is trying to mentally deal with this horrible loss, and that's just the first 10 minutes of the movie. Then they start a spelunking trip. If you are claustrophobic in any way, this section of the film could give you an anxiety attack. They squeeze through ridiculously tight spaces, nearly being crushed. Then the writer targets people who have any fear of heights by having the characters climb across the ceiling over a big pit. Not to mention the bats that are startling them, the inescapable darkness, and the potential they had for never finding a way out. This was a truly spectacular thriller that had me unable to blink because I was completely on edge.

Then they run into a troglodyte, and everything hits the fan. The girls all start screaming, running randomly through the tunnels, get split up, and this becomes your basic horror cliche. Man-eating monsters stalk the heroes in the dark, some of them die, some fight back, and one girl makes it out alive. It's amazing, even though these monsters are ridiculously vicious and everything moves faster as they pounce, the movie becomes decidedly LESS scary once the troglodytes show up. The death toll and pools full of blood aren't as scary as the potential for death when they were stuck in a tunnel. They try to redeem the film (and somewhat succeed) by having a story arc for the main character that shows her "descent" into madness. The fact that she does not remain pure and innocent through the movie makes for a nice twist on the typical horror tropes. But I just can't get over the unnecessary monster sequences, particularly because they were so successful at creating fear without taking it to the supernatural. My other problem is the fact that, although they had a couple sequences of the women chatting before entering the cave, they didn't do a good enough job of differentiating one woman from another. Therefore, when they are in the caves and all wearing similar gear, I can't tell one from another. I couldn't tell if I was watching Sam, Becky, Holly, etc. These couple of missteps keep The Descent from being a film I'd want to watch again. It's too bad, because it definitely could have been great.