Descended into stupidity and for me sheer boredom.

Rating: 1/10 (21 March 2011)

A simple question. "What is a horror film designed to make it's audience do?" The answer is easy to frighten us. If a horror film can do that and to an extent makes us emotionally care on some level about the characters who are getting stalked or killed or whatever, then it's a horror that can be classified as such and is enjoyable to watch as we become involved.
In short as you can guess from my rating The Descent fails to do either. I am staggered that the rating for one of the worst "horror" films I have seen whether it's British or otherwise is this high of a 7.4. Granted I will agree that it is very gory and violent and if you are particularly averse to that but like horrors you might enjoy cringing. The Descent certainly earned it's eighteen certificate in that respect. The thing is I have seen lots of gory films and are probably more desensitised to movie violence than some people. (Even though sometimes I have to look away, like Eden Lake a truly excellent horror, which I wouldn't call entertaining, but the whole thing like the story, themes, characters and acting are greatly orchestrated.)
Anyway the first five minutes of The Descent aren't too bad with a superb eerie scene in the hospital where the main character is in an accident. The film then chugs along at an average pace twenty minutes in before they enter the cave. The characters are set up nicely and the acting is okay for virtually unknown stars. But really there is little or no characterisation for the characters who are as thin as cardboard and the script is bad really.
I would be prepared to overlook the bad script and little characterisation if the film had generally been frightening but it wasn't. I think overall I jumped in fright about four times in the whole film and two of those moments were before they even enter the cave. The first reason I was hardly frightened was because the film took far too long in getting going with an exhaustive pace of slowness. It's about fifty minutes in before you see the weird predator creatures that stalk them. Secondly the film's characters seems devoid of basic common sense. When the girl who acts as a guide of the cave leaves the guide book in the car deliberately, you know the movie is descending into stupidity. It becomes even more ridiculous when they are down in the caves and get trapped in when she tells them that they are not even in the cave that is on the guidebook and that no one has ever been in the caves before. She thought it would be a nice surprise for them to explore it. I mean how stupid can you get? I know humans can act less rationally but come on. Any "expert" on anything of any sort always plans for contingencies and a "guide" should never lie to the ones they are leading into a cave whether they are strangers or friends.
With that you don't come to care about any of the characters as they (the woman guide really) steer themselves into death by their own stupidity and as the movie progressed it got sillier with one of the girls running away from the group when they find out about the predators. Duh! Sticking together in a group is probably a good idea as it maximises your chances of survival. They also just kept shrieking all the time and it got annoying. As a result of all this I was rooting for the predators to kill off the group and I'm pretty sure I wasn't meant to be on their side. It's just a relief when they do kill most of them but one (unfortunately) to rid myself of the boredom of listening to them and watching them. Ironically some of the scenes I found quite funny as the predators looked so fake, the CGI was awful even with a small budget, it's no excuse. As a result there's just no atmosphere.
I watched this until the end hoping it would improve but it just got steadily worse. I know there is a part two but I won't watch it. I couldn't put myself through the torture of boredom again. This is one of worst made and stupidest horror films I have seen and isn't worth the time of day. If anyone is a horror fan and are thinking of seeing it I would advise to not waste your time. I have seen scarier twelve rated movies (The Others being a good example and that was brilliant). Just don't watch The Descent it's that bad.