The scariest and best horror film of the year - and IN YEARS!!!

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2006)

THE DESCENT (2006) **** Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, MyAnna Buring, Nora-Jane No one, Oliver Milburn, Olly Kayll. Affectively excellent creep-out horror film  the best of the year and IN YEARS!  that will do for cave spelunking what "Psycho" did for showering. The simple enough premise  six healthy, young friends (all women), go on an adventure in the woods and uncover an unholy nest of 'crawlers', bat- like monstrosities with a nasty habit of devouring human flesh!  gets a vita adrenaline rush thanks to the shrewdly dispatched delivery by filmmaker Neil Marshall causing claustrophobia to no unnerving end. Macdonald comes across as the second coming of Sigourney Weaver with her stoic survivor's strength and triumphant will to take on anything. Buckets of blood, visceral gore and stomach-churning dread with genuinely shocking moments of thrills, pure horror and a giddy-head-rush in the simple thanks that you aren't on screen facing your worst fears. Cheers to the diabolically talented make-up by Tanya Lodge's crew and the canny production design by Simon Bowles are complemented by sturdy cinematography by Sam McCurdy. Echoes of Craven, Raimi and Romero with nods to "Deliverance", "Carrie" and "The Blair Witch Project" yet ultimately an original, knotty design altogether.