Could have worked as a psychological thriller

Rating: 4/10 (30 July 2006)

This movie had a really promising if a bit implausible setting. A woman called Sarah recovering of the loss of her husband and child, her friend Juno, who presumably had had an affair with her husband, and four more women take off to the wilderness for some extreme cave exploration. It just so happens that there's a cave-in to seal their route out and the women have to find their way in the maze of unexplored narrow tunnels and caverns. The atmosphere is very intense and pressing and could have been built up with character development and conflicts that are bound to happen between people in stressful and frightening situations(Cube anyone?)... But of course none of this gets a chance to happen as some skinny and blind human-like creatures turn up and the rest of the film serves us to some of the cheesiest horror this side of "Scream" nullifying the immersing setting.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against monsters. I love "Predator" and "Aliens", but these guys in "The Descent" just made me yawn. How do they kill wolves when they have insurmountable difficulties killing or even perceiving 50kg women with no combat experience whatsoever is beyond me. Of course these creatures pop out of nowhere on screen with lots of noise when a 5-year old might think everything is okay. It was actually quite stupefying to see so many horror-clichés one after the other after another.
A movie that had started out very promising had me yawning and waiting it to be over during the last 50 minutes.