The Descent

Rating: 7/10 (24 September 2008)

Ostensibly, "The Descent" is a fairly formulaic horror film where the entire cast gets slaughtered one-by-one by a group of killers. The visions and premonitions of protagonist Sarah are basic horror fodder as well, though they provide us with a brilliant ending-sequence where the vision of her daughter and the reality of her being trapped in the cave mesh in a stylish way. Nevertheless, this standard horror film works well because of the twisted psychological framework that exists in the background.
By descending into the cave, symbolically the group of heroines descends into the subconscious, to find mankind's menacing prehistory lingering in the shadows. As the group of primitive cavemen attacks them, the facade of civilization and friendship dissolves, and symbolically these two conditions (conscious and subconscious, prehistory and present) mesh and interweave, to the point where the killer creatures are distorted mirror-images of the main cast.
There's plenty of garish horror and gore, but director Neil Marshall has a few visual aces up his sleeve with the threatening night-vision shots (acting as glimpses into the subconscious) amidst piles of bones and with the creatures lurking in the background.