Extreme sport-girls in DEEP trouble!

Rating: 8/10 (22 January 2006)

With "Dog Soldiers", director Neil Marshall clearly showed already that he was very talented and "The Descent" confirms this statement for sure! In his second horror achievement, Marshall proves himself to be a versatile filmmaker, with ingenious new ideas and a good old-fashioned sense of grim and disturbing chaos. "The Descent" is quite gory, but also suspenseful and full of intrigues and surprise twists, which is a really rare combination nowadays. Marshall opted for an all female cast, which is quite innovating in horror (especially blend with the other topic of extreme sports), and this evidently creases an almost natural atmosphere of competition, jealousy and betrayal that our gifted director captures on film perfectly. A circle of six friends, all into extreme sports and reckless kicks, meet to go on a caving expedition exactly one year after one of them Â– Sarah Â– lost her husband and 8 year old daughter in a tragic road accident. The ominous cave quickly becomes a deadly challenge when it turns out that the competitive leader Juno single-handedly the location. "The Descent" is a very exciting film, with believable characters and some excellent gross-out special effects. Marshall's directing is very tight and the film's fast pacing doesn't leave you much time to ponder about possible flaws and/or plot holes. The "residents" of the cave are effectively unsettling creations that produce frightening sounds and crawl around creepily. The ending of the film can be interpreted in several ways, which is a surprisingly intelligent and unexpected twist for such an "ordinary" horror production. In short, "The Descent" is highly recommended and, personally, I can't wait to see what Marshall's next project will be like.