Review of The Descent (2005) by Markb. — 07 Aug 2006

Part of what makes watching horror movies, good or bad, with an audience so much fun is occasionally getting to hear some of them talk to the characters onscreen, usually offering such tips as "Don't go in there/ out there/ up there!!" or some variation.

The Descent definitely qualifies as the ultimate "Don't go DOWN there!!" movie. Six outdoorswomen, including one who survived an astonishing tragedy and another who's quite reminiscent of a distaff Burt Reynolds from Deliverance, only even more unduly cocky and wrongheaded, explore an unknown cave and find that being trapped inside it constitutes the LEAST of their troubles.

Writer/ director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, and absolutely no relation to Pretty Woman's Garry M.) has come up with an instant genre classic that's relatively light on explicit gore (at least by 2006 R-rated horror movie standards), replacing some of it with great use of naturalistic underground light sources (or their lack thereof) to really ramp up the tension; it's a testament to Marshall's confidence and skill that even though you don't always see everything that's happening onscreen, you're amazingly never in doubt as to what's going on.

Marshall is an excellent student of the horror genre, expertly weaving together visual and audio cues, themes and motifs familiar to fans of Alien, Predator, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Final Destination and even Carrie while still making a genuine original.

My one cavil with Marshall is that of the six spelunkers, only Sarah and Juno come across as well-developed characters; the other four serve, more or less, as potential raw meat. If Marshall has been studying the work of George A.

Romero, who always took the trouble to individualize even the zombie victims with the least amount of screen time in his Living Dead quadrology, then it's time to take a few more lessons! Nevertheless, The Descent is otherwise a smart, sweaty, scary and intensely suspenseful little gem in which Marshall even compensates for the Britishness of his characters and cast (even though the movie mostly takes place in the Appalachian mountains) by making their differing driving habits a subtle part of the plot, and he cleverly turns the potentially cliched final minute into something that can actually be interpreted two different ways! Most of all, though, The Descent proves beyond question why camping, hiking, rafting or other outdoor expeditions are best left to Reynolds and Jon Voight in Deliverance, Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe in Southern Comfort, Joe Pesci and Danny Glover in Gone Fishin'.

..