Neil Marshall has found an unusual niche!!

Rating: 9/10 (29 December 2005)

I would assume that anybody thinking about going to the cinema would expect The Descent to be a cheap, late 80's style, horror movie designed to appease students and teenagers. Any film about a group of caving, pot-holing, babes going underground and facing a horde of sub-human lifeforms intent on devouring them just screams a blood and breasts fest, but those who damn it without chance would be wrong. Incredibly wrong. Neil Marshall, the director of the delectable Dog Soldiers, has discovered a real talent for taking premises that otherwise could be deemed tacky and unoriginal and turning them into roller-coaster shockers with as much intelligence as your average David Lynch film.
Marshall's talent lies in his desire to frighten, I mean really frighten, by using John Carpenter's age old trick of relax your audience, make them feel comfortable and then, when they least expect it, stab them in the back. He did this in Dog Soldiers by introducing a biting humour to his script, setting us up for genuine chills when the blood started flowing. In The Descent he introduces us to a warm group of friends, who's emotional cracks appear early on, we feel safe and secure with them, knowing that whatever happens we can trust their abilities and if not at least their bond. But the gradual breakdown of their relationships only add to the paranoia we as viewers are starting to experience. Our fears are heightened when, at the first instance off trouble, the girls split up in a panic and we are lost with them, in a seemingly endless maze of rock and caves.
Marshall's limited budget never shows and we spend the entire film in awe and wonder of the fantastic set design, always wondering how they did it. The true magic of cinema! Only small problems arise in sentimental subplots that can occasionally detract from the story at hand. Our leading lady Sarah loses her husband and daughter at the opening of the film and a recurring dream/hallucination Sarah experience becomes quite tiresome and one starts to wish that Marshall had left them at ground level. However, problems like this are mere quibbles in the face of what truly is a force in British horror. Hollywood has tried to smudge it's veneer recently with the gruesome, if not slightly inadequate, remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it is this film along with the truly horrific Wolf Creek, that I feel is offering us a real resurgence of the unflinching, exploitative horror only the Seventies could supply us with.
Congratulations Mr Marshall, keep up the good work. It's about time people got really scared again.