As good as they say it is.....

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2007)

I was looking for a good action film when I came across Dog Soldiers quite obviously I didn't find it, but I looked for other movies by Neil Marshall and came across "The descent", I immediately remembered the movie as being similar to "the Cave" and being released close each other.
What occurred to me is that both have obviously been inspired, by "The Descent" a popular novel by Jeff Long, but the difference(Hehe) ends there, while Cave is one of the better PG-13 (the bane of movies) rated movies which is quite clearly inspired by the novel, a movie with that rating can only get this good, "The Descent movie" even though it shares the same name as the novel is quite different from both, if you've seen "The Cave" or read the novel then in fact the movie will have your mind ticking even more.
I've seen hundreds of movies and thanks to a traumatic experience in my childhood when I saw The Omen, and was mind-fu##ed for 2 weeks (boohoo), I've lost all fear of horror movies and rarely and I mean rarely get surprised by the timing or nature of the "Shock Scenes" and even by THOSE SHOCKS THAT NEVER CAME, but hell there were all of 4 scenes that left me completely shocked and thats more than I've been in a few years, one particular scene had me chilled to bone (and freaked my mom, a horror movie fan even more, when she watched it separately),trust me when I say THIS MOVIE HAS BOUGHT A FRESH BREATH TO THE ACTION-HORROR-THRILLER GENRE NOT SEEN IN DECADES.
The movie is a pioneer of sorts in the action-horror-thriller genre some examples are:-
1) No guns.
2) All women cast.
3)No black people who get killed first haha kidding (not that I care but luckily the film-maker realises others don't either you cast according to your vision not to be demographically correct).
4)Lots of unanswered questions, in fact a dramatic standoff that I expected never came, everyone will have many different viewpoints to at least 3 or 4 major events in the movie.
5)The heroine is not a perfect, moral, indestructible, lucky person but in fact vulnerable and I BELIEVE displayed a major lack of judgment in a particular scene.
6)A creature that's probably as vulnerable as the people.
7)Fantastic depiction of the mental condition of the characters that changes throughout the movie.
and many more.....
For a B-movie the production values were fantastic including the sound effects, cinematography and direction, the script was extremely well written with absolutely no corny dialogues or scenes.
One of the only complaints was that the claustrophobic confines of the caves was never really effectively captured and even though the tension always remained the feeling of claustrophobia never really hits you SAVE FOR ONE BRILLIANT SCENE, if this was done then this would have been as near a perfect film of this genre as possible, Maybe some more POV (point of view) shooting was required (the caving videos on TV have me squirming).
The acting of this movie was top notch with a brilliant and subdued performance from the entire cast, none of the histrionics that you would expect from an all women cast. The number of QUESTIONS THAT WERE RAISED AND ANSWERED JUST BY MERE LOOKS speaks volumes of the quality of acting.
The movie has too many brilliant sequences to name but the end and the opening sequence are worth mentioning.
This movie may not be as scary as other films due to many points but has its fair share of horror and shock moments, besides other great points, it is after all a multi-genre film.(Not a good judge of fear but i feel a movies only truly scary when the movies based in real life situations, because I'm definitely never going into unexplored caves so its difficult to identify with).
Besides the one flaw this movie has some minor plot holes and inconsistencies of which only one is alarming but cannot be mentioned without spoilers, these too marginally help in removing this movie from the near perfect ratings.
In all we have a near perfect ACTION-HORROR-thriller movie that a breath of fresh air, and has brilliant acting and superb production values even when compared to the better budget films.
A must watch if your fan of the genre in particular or horror/action/thriller movies in general.
-s some plot holes and inconsistencies, claustrophobia doesn't hit.
+/-s the error in judgment (I'm fine with it though).
+s brilliant acting, superb production values, large number of brilliant scenes, breath of fresh air, a true multigenre film.
total 9/10 (if you factor in the budget, and the fact that it exceeded expectations, and that such efforts from British filmmakers need encouragement then this movie is a ten but will take a call on that after many years and some repeat viewings)