This is Alien underground; and even then, it's all a bit silly.

Rating: 6/10 (8 December 2007)

The Descent seems to be a film that has tricked people; it has tricked people into thinking that what it is they are seeing is new, original and fresh yet at the same time: scary, unpredictable and violent. I would argue back that The Descent is nothing more than a going through of the motions that made films like Alien and the original Dawn of the Dead the successes they are. I remember seeing Dog Soldiers, director Neil Marshall's first film, and being impressed with how he got across an atmosphere of no-hope; how he set the situation up with the soldiers and how he actually had the intelligence to at least acknowledge what sources he was getting his ideas from: in that case, it was Zulu as stated by one of the characters as they held up inside an old country house  I liked the twist ending more in that film, also.
Here, instead of trained soldiers who you would think are up to the task of defeating whatever beasts lie ahead; we are given half a dozen of your everyday British girls who are into boyfriends, clubbing, driving dangerously, hard drinking and..........climbing and cave dwelling. Here, you could say there is an excuse for the stupidity since they aren't going to be prepared for what awaits them unlike the soldiers were but then again, half way through The Descent; the women are strong enough and hard bodied enough to actually fight back against these cave monsters: and there's me thinking it would just be lambs to the slaughter but it turns out they're up for the scrap much like the soldiers were in Dog Soldiers. But wait a minute  hard bodied, trained soldiers going up against beasts of some kind in a last stand scenario? That was Dog Soldiers; it would seem Marshall has made the exact same film only replace 'soldiers' with 'women' and delete 'trained' altogether out of the last sentence.
Yes, there is no originality here in fact Marshall has just remade his last film. The characters don't need to be women in fact they are written as male characters BY an actual male  Marshall probably just thought he'd be clever by changing the gender at the last minute; Queer theory fanatics will no doubt have a field day in deciphering what that all means, the result of which will probably culminate in them thinking the writer doesn't or hasn't known many women in the past. The Descent is Alien in a cave; but unlike Dog Soldiers, no girl ever comes up with the line: "It's just like that film: Alien!" The film begins in a tragic and eerie way and follows on with one character, as they walk through the woods before they get to the cave entrance, exclaiming some sort of warning: Watch out for hallucinations; paranoia; schizophrenia; etc. is her advice  one question: why would she say all this and does she know something we don't? "Watch out for film clones" would be my advice to any one about to sit through this film. The girl also carries around a hand-held camera, filming her expedition which is something I remember Tarantino announcing that he hated in an interview once: but the POV shot from the DV camera is more a spoof of Aliens than that of a cliché.
Once we are at the entrance and in; the girls do their very best to find the smallest and tightest crevice they can in order to trap themselves into. They do a good job since one such scene involves a girl who it would appear is, (wait for it), actually afraid of small spaces that gets stuck in a tiny, tiny tunnel as the ceiling begins to move down on top of them. Then the first of, well, two twists: it appears that no one actually brought a map but that isn't the twist because one such character has some dark reasons: at this point you'd probably want to bang your head on the cave's rocky wall but then you remember you're not actually in the film since you've seen it all before anyway and haven't been absorbed at this point. Following on from this, The Descent for the next forty or so minutes turns into a series of obligatory jumps: I am amazed at how many people like this film  it can't be the star power selling it and it isn't the level of gore so what is it that's so good about it? The jumps, for the record consist of: Bats flying out into a characters face; someone looking down a narrow gap only to turn around and have a buddy in their face and of course: "Let's show the monster piece by piece in fast flash-bys." Ridley Scott should sue.
I admit that The Descent had me entertained and thinking what would happen at certain times. This was when the team got split up and had to fend for themselves and the final thirty minutes reminded me of Apocalypto; a film that hadn't been made yet. The film's crucible is also much better than Aliens' (Cameron's 'attempt') since it engages us and doesn't resort to cheesy one-liners and mindless gun toting action. Instead, it references Apocalypse Now and Predator in two immediate compositions (coming out of the swamp/avoiding detection of beast) but also gives us a deadly game of cat and mouse between the girls and the monsters  often chase, often 'how do I get out of this situation'. The Descent wasn't a film I liked and can't say was great but it quenches the cheap thrills thirst although I was expecting a little more.