one thrill ride

Rating: 9/10 (22 November 2006)

Film is a great medium. Film makers have utilised the medium to entertain us, but the greatest element of film is its ability to force an emotional response from us. Laugh, cry, enrage, move and scare. Horror has always been a genre with drawing power. Whether to simply scare, or injected with a contemporary or political edge. A current trend of horror films is torture porn. Agonising scenes of pain and misery, violence through at the audience without restraint. While some film makers have made great pieces of cinema with the torture porn, many have lacked the merit and style ending with a pointless film with an abundance of gore.
The Decent is a drawn back to the classic seventies horror; Alien the main point of reference. A year after Sarah loses her husband and child, she and five other friends pick up their thrill seeking trend on a caving expedition. Obviously while the expedition starts fine, yet soon after goes wrong. When their only point of exit collapses and traps them, they need to find another way out, but that's not their only problem. Fear, claustrophobia, paranoia from the dark, and the current inhabitants of this cave.
Director Neil Marshall's previous film Dog Soldiers was an interesting yet muddled film. Not sure where he wanted to take it; dark comedy, action or full on horror. The Decent sees Marshall knowing exactly where he wants to head, with methodical precession. The Decent is one of the first horror films in a very long time that hasn't relied upon violence to make the audience uncomfortable. From the get go dread and the most foreboding atmosphere surround you. The beginning of the caving routes are extremely claustrophobic and unsettling. Deafning silence and minimal sound effects, perpetually keep the anxiety levels high.
Marshall has brilliantly use the widescreen format by hardly using it at all. Crawling through tunnels and paths, only small amounts of the screen are lit, highlighted and washed from the womens flash lights, red flares, glow sticks and the eerie, grainy night vision camera. The crushing, empty blackness intensifies the unknown and unseen. Marshall wrings every last bit out to scare and unnerve, he shows he's a horror fan boy, brings out all he can to pull out the biggest punches he can muster.
While the story may not be very complex, the character interactions are far from it. Friendships strain from past events, Juno's ego of leadership which only leads to recklessness. The danger starts internally of the group, even before the unknown starts to draw its head out. The dynamics of the group is kept believable by a very strong cast. Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Nora-Jane No one, Saskia Mulder, Alex Reid and MyAnna Buring are all strong and fight against the stereotypical heroin in trouble.
The Decent is fist clenching, terrifying and physically exhausting. Niel Marshall has created a brutally scary film that encapsulates what horror is all about; sitting in a dark room being scared witless.