Not bad, but nothing worth turning your brains upside down

Rating: 5/10 (16 December 2007)

What decided me to add my 2 cents to the 900+ reviews is the wave of comments of the mystical kind on this flick.
I guess quite a lot among us got the bit about the story being a metaphor for the main character's inner turmoil/angst/self-destructive grief/whatever. Is this a reason to worship this movie? To scrape the bottom of the barrel looking for oh-so subtle and clever clues sown by the genius director among out of focus background objects? I don't think so.
The psycho babble around this flick reminds me of the M. Night Shyamalan's hordes of zealots trying to enlighten the rest of the world about obsessive compulsive disorder seen as God's own secret weapon against hydrophobic aliens.
Come on, the gals in this movie are awfully two-dimensional, and their psychology looks more like variations on a guy's idealization of the fighting girl archetype. They are hardly anything but pretty cannon fodder (assuming G.I. Jane is your style). Frankly the director himself said that replacing the half dozen chicks with so many dudes would not have dramatically altered the plot.
But hey, that's just what you'd expect from a decent B movie. And, taken as such, The Descent is more than watchable. The actresses do a pretty good job portraying individuals torn between civilized habits and animal survival instinct. The big budget is not put to waste, although IMHO a cheaper production would not have hurt the movie much (and maybe allowed to shoot a couple more for the same price!). The old tricks are all out of the exploitation bag for our greatest pleasure.
What else could have we asked for? A bit of originality perhaps? No? That'll be only 5 stars for you, then.
My advice: relax and enjoy your primal claustrophobia. And find another cause to boil your brain over :).