One of the best horror films in decades.

Rating: 8/10 (9 January 2008)

Sticks to the basic formula of modern horror films (an hour of character development, a thirty minute rush with the baddies) but completely excels in every element of it. It doesn't transcend the genre, but instead it perfects it. It builds strong characters and goes in depth with the majority of them so that we become familiar with who these characters are and we become worried, knowing that their lives will soon be in grave danger. The first half delves into the mystery and fear of simply being in the cave. They are lost in an unknown territory with no help possible from the outside world. Marshall does a great job of developing a strong sense of claustrophobia and paranoia and a desperate need to escape from the hellish cave that these ladies have become lost in.
Then the second half steps it up enormously, creating one of the most frightening experiences of my life. The creatures are absolutely terrifying and put the viewer in a constant state of fear and even further paranoia. We forget about the need to escape the cave, though it is still a strong desperation, and we focus on the more pressing need to escape the creatures. The title certainly presents numerous meanings. There is the obvious descent further and further into the depths of the cave. Then there is the obvious descent into a metaphoric hell as they go darker and darker and finally the creatures appear. Yet even more internally, there is the characters descent into complete madness. The paranoia and insanity of it all is mostly apparent through Juno, who after accidentally stabbing Beth turns into a killing machine, and Sarah who, after actually killing Beth, becomes even more of a hollowed shell, absolutely annihilating everything in her way. This includes handicapping her only living friend, whom she just found out had an affair with her husband and that's why her husband and daughter died, which I hated at first but have just grown to love more and more. Her 'badassness' was just overwhelming and completely awesome.
The ending is one of the greatest of recent years (I saw the original UK ending where Sarah doesn't actually escape, by the way). It transcends the Hollywood trend of the one hot girl that we see from beginning to end surviving all of the impossible to survive odds and getting away from the horror, in the most unrealistic fashion. But in this ending, we see the realistic fact that no one has a chance of surviving those odds and a great revelation of complete mental breakdown to the horrors of the descent. This film also has the privilege of being the only film that I've screamed like a black person during, which happened when the creature appeared on the video camera. I'm normally a fan of more ambietic, mental horror but this film just had my pulse racing like I was having a heart attack whilst soiling myself. I've rarely had a more frightening, yet extremely entertaining time watching a film. It also has the privilege of making me grimace and mutter "Fuck." more than any other picture.