A smart, scary and overall superb subterranean creature feature survivalist horror shocker

Rating: 10/10 (6 August 2006)

A motley sextet of spunky and adventurous young British women embark on an exciting spelunking expedition into a heretofore neglected and unexplored Appalachian cavern. Things turn sour when they get trapped deep down in the bowels of the earth by a sudden cave-in. Things go from already really bad to much, much horribly worse when the ladies find out they are not alone: there's a lethal and hungry gaggle of blind, agile and savage carnivorous albino humanoid mutant beasts who relentlessly stalk and attack the endangered group.
Writer/director Neil ("Dog Soldiers") Marshall wisely takes his time setting up the characters and the situation, carefully easing the viewer into the central narrative before hitting us with all he's got. And boy does he got loads to hit us with: Besides the intrinsically taut, arresting and unsettling premise, we also have plenty of shockingly raw, gruesome and visceral violence, truly spooky, ugly and grotesque monsters, a clammy, creepy and suffocatingly claustrophobic atmosphere which steadily intensifies as the film goes on, and one corker of a startling surprise ending. Moreover, Marshall is to be further commended for not making a thuddingly obvious and heavy-handed proto-feminist empowerment chick flick; there's no sisters are doing it for themselves type preaching to be found in a single moment of this film. Instead the female characters have not only their survivalist skills pushed to the limit, but also their bonds of friendship and loyalty put to the ultimate test. Watching these women either stick by or abandon one another during their harrowing ordeal gives this movie a truly disturbing, substantial and provocative edge, clearly showing how these kinds of punishing life-threatening circumstances bring out the best and worst in human beings. Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Saskia Mulder, Alex Reid, MyAnna Buring and Nora-Jane No one all give excellent and engaging performances, deftly creating believable and likable characters who you genuinely care about (Macdonald especially shines as the toughest and most fiercely self-reliant member of the group). Better still, the monsters in the film aren't done with that dreadfully phony and rarely convincing CGI; the filmmakers thankfully opted for using folks in highly effective and persuasive suits. But what truly makes this a terrific fright film knock-out is the admirable and wonderful marked emphasis on the interplay between the characters, thus ensuring that there's a fabulous abundance of heart and humanity as well as the expected (and wholly terrifying) chills and thrills. A simply stupendous movie that's absolutely essential viewing for horror fans the world over.