Good editing, lacking elsewhere

Rating: Null/10 (13 August 2006)

I had some positive expectations for 'The Descent' but few were fulfilled.
The first quarter of the movie was hard to get through. The characters were not very interesting and I never found myself favoring any of them. The 'enemy element', lets call it, was pretty mediocre. However, I do realize that it's hard to be highly original in this area and that this is not a high-budget film - so it's not bad.
The quality of the picture during daylight was a bit bad and gave me the feel of poor film resolution rather than a dark tone or ambiance.
Another problem I had was plausibility. I had problems with the plausibility aspect of the 'enemy element'. Usually I tend to overlook these things, but there were some strong feasibility issues here (I won't list them so as to spoil anything). Even 'The Cave' did much better job in this area.
Perhaps the biggest problem I had with this movie was that it was simply a collection of surprise camera shots rather than mounting tension with the characters (like 'Alien'). Because I didn't really care for the characters, it was hard for me to feel any fear.
As for what I did like - well, those surprise shots I refer to above are pretty good and unexpected (even for those who've seen a lot of these kinds of movies), so they work well. In fact, I could hear some audience members gasping / reacting to many of these moments. Also, some of the underground scenes were pretty good at setting up a claustrophobic atmosphere.
Overall, there are definitely a few scares/surprises in this movie, but more was needed for me to consider it 'good'.