A new horror classic

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2008)

The story = On a daredevil caving holiday six girls are trapped underground when an unexpected rock falls and blocks their exit. Searching the maze of tunnels for a way out, they find themselves hunted down by a race of fearless hungary predators.
Perhaps it would be wrong to suggest that the British horror film has come back to life (especially as, recently, the lacklustre CREEP (2004) hammered one more nail in the coffin), but Neil Marshall's intense THE DESCENT breathes a whole new life into the British horror movies.
The Descent is creepy intense and nerve racking and really makes the best of combining claustrophobia and nasties lurking in the dark. To be honest, being trapped in an airless dark hole not much bigger than my own body would be, possibly, one of my least favourite leisure activities  the scope for Marshall to scare me half to death was immense. The set up at the beginning is really tragic and heartbreaking as it sees one of the main characters husband and child die in an equally tragic car accident. The Descent is in no way a slasher movie it owes more movies like Aliens with a strong female lead battling against of zombie mutant alien like creatures. Marshall put me right there with them and perfectly captured the thrill, utter fear and claustrophobic nature of such an excursion. Then second half of this bad girl kicked in with creatures peering in the shadows, sadistic/brutal/messy attacks, seat jumping boo scares, intense mano et beasto get downs, powerful, suspense filled bits and a strong dose of "human" evil at that. Stack on top of all that genre quality; energetic directing, true scares, an incredibly moving score, a talented manner of milking the cave surroundings, a sly use of dream sequences and an ending that toyed with my knowledge of known conventions to rip my heart out and you get a grade a quality horror classic.
Shauna Macdonald (Sarah) was awesome and hit all the right notes, very credible and should be up there with all the other female action heroes. Natalie Mendoza (Juno) avoided the usual pitfalls that her type of character usually comes with and put out a layered performance. Nora Jane No one (Holly) was very much capable as the more butch of the group. Alex Reid (Beth) and Saskia Mulder (Rebecca) were both convincing in their roles.
All in all this is a true horror classic and for once worth all the rave reviews from the critics that this movie has been getting and plus all the female characters are astounding and made you sympathise with them, very rare that happens in a horror movie, in fact this is probably the first.