Nice Try

Rating: Null/10 (29 February 2008)

Descent, The (2005)
** (out of 4)
The latest horror film from director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers) comes as a major disappointment after hearing so many good things. My girlfriend told me to pick out a winner, I picked this but sadly we both walked away disappointed. Six women travel to the mountains so that they can explore a cave. Once inside the cave they get trapped and don't know their way out so they must travel forward where they run into flesh eating humanoids. This film has so much going for it but at the one hour mark it runs into a wall and blows up in the viewers face. There are two major problems, which I'll get to in a second. Technically, this is one of the best made horror films I've seen in quite some time. Once we enter the cave the director is able to build some great atmosphere, some nice suspense and an overall atmospheric mood. However, building suspense is very tricky because you've got to know how far you can pull the suspense without the viewing growing tired. The suspense builds for the first hour and then it just hits the wall and it seemed everyone in the crowd grew tired the same time I did. Another problem is that the monsters are hide throughout most of the first half of the film. As Roger Corman use to say, hide the monsters as long as you can because when you finally show them they won't be nearly as effective as what the viewer has already build up in their minds. When the monsters finally did appear they were another letdown because they seemed like that bald guy in The Lord of the Rings. The monsters were nearly as scary as the suspense that lead up to them so this just added to the boredom. Then there's a "twist" at the end that I really hated. This was a very nice and strong try but things just didn't work out in the final thirty minutes.