No fun at all

Rating: 3/10 (13 August 2006)

I'm mystified by the success of this film and the accolades it is getting. To me, it represents all that is wrong with modern British horror films, and all that is horrible about the way society has gone as a whole. The Descent is a dark, relentlessly unpleasant, foul-mouthed, deliberately disturbing film, just as the director's Dog Soldiers was. Is this really the thing we want to see when we slip into the cinema to escape the harsh realities of the world? British horror films, particularly in the 1970s, used to have style, wit, charm, sexiness, all couched in a peculiarly British style. See Assault, And Soon The Darkness, The Corpse or Fright. But films like this one, along with Creep, Shaun Of The Dead, Severance and the aforementioned Dog Soldiers only give us endless swearing, dysfunctional human beings, claustrophobic scenarios and nasty asides. Such a shame.