Still the best horror film of the noughties

Rating: 10/10 (20 June 2019)

Yep,many have tried and failed to get anywhere close to the sheer raw terror and atmosphere portrayed in this film,everything from the cast to the direction by Neil Marshall,sound design,production and set design,lighting and David Julyan's excellent film score are all given superb attention to detail be all involved,by the time the terrifying creatures first appear in one of the greatest scares you'll ever see you'll already have adjusted to the confusion of the misleading cold dark and dank claustrophobic atmosphere of the cave along due to probably the best use of source lighting I've seen in this type of film (no overly lit set)with the girls as you are literally taking down or 'descend' into the cave system from then on the sheer horror of what is going on and what they have come across becomes an exercise in all out panic and desperation to escape from literally hell on earth not just from the unpredictability of the undiscovered but also the certain death at the hands of the malevolent creatures (who take an hour to show up) where the scares come thick and fast,not unlike the Xenomorphs in the Alien films the 'crawlers' are a very unforgiving menace of what they consider a meal ticket and it gets brutal and messy as the girls are hunted down and picked off individually,this is horror done right and it's not for the faint hearted due to the intense sense of tension and anxiety both experienced by the viewer and the cast so if you have heart problems and warn against it,I have watched this film multiple times since it's release in 2005 and it's still one hell of a film still unmatched it's only rival is for me A Quiet place and I've seen a lot of horror films since The Descent and even its own sequel couldn't live up to this despite retaining many of the original crew.