Much Better Than I Expected It To Be

Rating: 8/10 (21 January 2008)

From the description of the movie, I hadn't really expected to get very much out of this. It seemed like a pretty standard horror-type movie, and in some respects it was. A group of women who have some sort of annual "adventure" trip, go exploring a cave in the Appalachians in North Carolina. Trapped beneath the surface by a cave-in, they encounter what seem to be mutant humanoid type creatures who, to say the least, have quite an appetite for human flesh and blood. For the first little while, innocent things happen suddenly and unexpectedly, and I jumped because I knew there were creatures somewhere, then the creatures begin to appear suddenly and unexpectedly and I didn't jump as much because now I knew they were going to appear suddenly and unexpectedly, and there was a lot of blood and gore. So far, pretty standard horror stuff. But there were a lot of things I liked about this movie that really raised it up.
As the movie started, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and her husband appear ready to have a heart to heart conversation about some marriage difficulties. Instead, they end up in a horrific car crash that kills the husband and daughter. A shocker right off the top. Then, once the women are stuck in the cave, I'm expecting a sort of female version of male-bonding. Instead, there's the exact opposite. The group starts to splinter apart as they deal with their situation. (Thus perhaps a double entendre to the title: the descent into the cave and the descent of the group into an every woman for herself type of mentality.) I found myself guessing from moment to moment what was going to happen, and my guesses were generally wrong. That says two positive things: first, the writers put a lot of thought into this rather than going for the boringly predictable, and, second, this was interesting enough to keep me wanting to guess. The ending of the movie caught me totally off guard. First, there was Sarah's way of dealing with Juno (Natalie Mendoza) which totally shocked me, then there was what seemed to be the totally logical ending to the movie and the only guess I thought I was going to get right (about who survived) only to be taken in by an unexpected final scene, which causes uncertainty about whether the encounter between Sarah and Juno really took place, and which serves as a completely fitting (and completely unexpected) form of closure, as Sarah finally comes to terms with her daughter's death as she awaits what surely seems to be her own inevitable fate (a fate which is mercifully not shown.) A very violent and bloody movie finishes on a very gentle and peaceful (and one could even say spiritual) note.
This was really well done. The women fought perhaps a little too well against creatures that had evolved specifically to live in that dark environment and therefore should have had a huge advantage which too often didn't seem to be the case. The only other thing I would question is the addition of three extra women to the group. From the opening scenes of the rafting trip, my impression is that the usual group is of three friends. Why expand it to six in the Appalachians? The three additional women didn't seem to add very much - except a few more victims for the creatures - and a focus on the relationship between the original three might have been a more interesting study of the group dynamic. But that's about all I can find to criticize here. 8/10