'Chicks with picks.' Better than I expected but it ain't perfect...

Rating: 7/10 (10 July 2005)

The Descent opens with three friends, Sarah (Shauna MacDonald), Juno (Natalie Jackson Mendoza) & Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) white water rafting down some very British looking river. Sarah while on her way home with her husband Paul (Oliver Milburn) & young daughter Jessica (Molly Kayll) is involved in a road accident in which she is the only survivor. It's now 'One Year Later' & the girls are planning another adventure outing & meet up together in the heart of an American mountain range. They are joined by three more women, the annoying Holly (Nora-Jane No one), Beth (Alex Reid) & Sam (MyAnna Buring) who all set off for some underground caverns. Once they arrive they enter via a large hole in the ground, the only way out is to negotiate the passageways & tunnels. In traditional horror film style they quickly become lost & after a cave-in stuck, Juno admits she has brought them to the wrong cave system & one that is unexplored, furthermore she doesn't have a clue how to get out. As they venture deeper & further into the caverns panic & arguing sets in amongst the group, to make matters even worse they are not the only living creatures down there as they have to contend with flesh eating human like monsters...
Written & directed by Neil Marshall this UK production has me in two minds. On the one hand I thought certain aspects were better than I expected, while at other times I was disappointed. The script by Marshall, who made another British horror film called Dog Soldiers (2002) which I much prefer, takes what seemed like an eternity to get going & introduce the 'Crawlers'. I couldn't check my watch because I saw it in a cinema but it felt like well over 40 minutes before they showed up, to be fair when they do & The Descent kicks into straight horror then it's top-notch for the rest of it's running time. Until this point The Descent has virtually no horror elements at all, in fact it plays like a disaster film as they become trapped & try to figure a way out, I just can't get over how slow & uneventful this opening 30 plus minutes are. There was always a foreboding atmosphere that this was all building up to something but I went from excited expectation to desperate hope that something, anything that even resembles horror would pop up soon. I hated how Sarah's character suddenly became the female Arnold Schwarzenegger & kicked, punched, outrun, out-thought, stabbed, killed & poked eyes out as these 'Crawlers' couldn't even scratch her! Having said that the end slightly redeems itself. Also prepare to sit through a dark film, very dark. I mean dark as sometimes the screen is almost completely black & it's virtually impossible to see what's happening & bear in mind I saw it on a huge cinema screen. One cramped cave tunnel looks much like any-other so it is sometimes difficult to grasp just where everyone is in relation to everyone else & the location offers little variety. On the positive side, which there are many, Marshall creates some wonderfully atmospheric sequences in particular a scene when Sarah is stuck in a small tunnel which has to be one of the most tension filled & unnerving scenes in a horror film in the past few years. The caverns provide a real feeling of isolation which Marshall uses to his advantage. There are some real genuine scares here as well, I saw it with an audience in a cinema & there were some strong reactions to certain bits. I think we all liked the scene when Marshall first introduces a 'Crawler' via the infra red on a camcorder, you'll know when you see it. There are reasonable amounts of gore but they don't really kick in until the 'Crawlers' show up & they consist mainly of blood spurting & bites although there is a scene where someone's bone is sticking out through their skin, someone has a pick axe stuck through their throat & a cave full of bloody body parts & bones. The special effect are very good & thankfully it doesn't rely on awful CGI for which The Descent deserves another star at least. The 'Crawlers' themselves look a bit cheap at times & just like thin humans really & look almost exactly like Gollum from the Lord of the Ring (2001 - 2003) films. The acting is strong throughout & it was an interesting decision to have an entirely female cast & not a single male except Paul who dies within the first few minutes. Technically The Descent is fine but as I've mentioned the cinematography is somewhat dark & the cave setting became a little dull after a while. Overall I liked The Descent & I think most of the audience I watched it with did too, but unfortunately I just can't stop thinking about that painfully slow opening 30-40 minutes & I don't think I would be in any hurry to watch it again any time soon because of this. Oh, & the aerial shots of the U.S.A. mountain range don't match the ground shots which were filmed in Scotland I believe as the trees are completely different. I think The Descent is a very good horror film but not a brilliant one, but when all said & done I definitely think it's well worth watching so what are you waiting for?