Disappointing.....

Rating: 4/10 (11 July 2005)

As a horror movie fan, i thought why not write my first review about a film from my favourite genre? I saw The Descent at the cinema last night. I went to see it because not only is it a horror film, it's made by the same guy who gave us the fantastic Dog Soldiers. Unfortunately i didn't find it to be anywhere near as good as Dog Soldiers is. One of the main problems is the characters. The acting is fine but i didn't like any of the characters and the main one, Sarah, really wore on my nerves. I spent the entire film hoping she would get killed off. The first half of the film until the monsters show up did get slightly boring and when the monsters did make their appearance, they weren't really that scary. They were well done but reminded me of Gollum from the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. In fact the film isn't really that scary at all. There are the usual fake scares- bats flying out of a cave, a character turning around to find another character right behind them etc and its all things we've seen before. Having said that there are a couple of very good moments involving an infrared camcorder and a case of mistaken identity between two of the characters which brought the film up in my estimation. There is some gore which is well done. One thing that is extremely effective is the setting. Being claustrophobic i felt uncomfortable on more than one occasion watching the girls crawl through tiny tunnels that could collapse at any moment and on leaving the cinema i genuinely felt as if i had been down in the caves with these characters. However despite the great setting, good effects and a couple of decent moments, i still found this movie to be a disappointment. I can't really say exactly why and i wouldn't discourage others from seeing it as you may get far more out of it than i did. I don't think its a bad film, i just didn't find it to be that great. A case where i liked the trailer more than the film.