What horror is all about

Rating: 8/10 (7 April 2006)

I'm really glad with this so called "renaissance" of the horror genre. Well, I call it like that, but there are different names of course. A time has come where filmmakers are determined to frighten the viewer and not just with sounds and images and blood, but with a story and characters that help creating the tension in the environment. In other words, not a remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "The Fog".
Kind of what "The Others" did, memorably, in its time. Neil Marshall is the name of the British man who made all of this possible with "The Descent". He's made a motion picture that's very, very scary. In the line of "Saw", but gratefully with more intelligence, Marshall wrote his centered story focused in a little number of characters and one particular place; six girlfriends and the mountains: a cave.
At this moment I'm regretting not having seen "The Cave", which I assume must have been a piece of crap and a perfect example to compare with this movie. It sounds simple, yes; some friends, an expedition, an inconvenientIt's not. Before we are taken to the encounter, we witness an accident: Sarah looses her daughter and husband. With this, Marshall is able to draw the relationships between the girls and explain future actions.
You know when a movie is working on the characters when you can think about what the will do next. In "The Descent", there's a lot of that. After these friends go down the cave and events start unfolding, it's clear that survival comes first but: whose survival? Marshall allows us to watch, accurately, how the situation or the atmosphere may change the attitude of a person.
As the movie advances, we began to wonder about what's going to happen; to whom. We start making our predictions and we think we've got everything right when, unexpectedly, Marshall survives the test of predictability too: he constructs human beings with feelings and the capacity of reasoning even in the most difficult situations. It's not that I won't, but that I can't tell what happens, which is different.
Luckily, the characters do things that help every inconvenience, and any thing that seems supernatural is not; all is kept between the limits of reality. The film is very good because it drags you inside; it drags you inside the cave when you could have stayed outside, if you know what I mean. It is very good because Marshall coordinates his cameras professionally, with shaky movements and a lot of darkness that becomes another main character.
The girls are portrayed by several British actresses with lots of roles in T.V and an Asian actress with a Latin name. They are all perfect, but ultimately it's not about them; it's about Marshall's accomplishment with his independent company and surprising film that shocks you with its ending and instantly activates a conversation about the film itself and the world of movies.