Review on the American Release

Rating: 9/10 (6 August 2006)

I, for the past few years have been pretty disgusted about seeing horror movies in the theaters. All the PG-13 horror films coming out seem to swarm the theaters to naive movie goers. I have been seeing the previews for "The Descent" for a few weeks now and thought it looked interesting, but not interesting enough to go and see it in the theaters. It wasn't until I did some research on the movie and found out that it was directed by the same guy that did "Dog Soldiers" that I got really interested. So I decided to leave work early and go and check it out in the theaters.
The storyline is pretty simple. A group of close women friends are thrill chasers. This is how the movie starts out with them white water rafting. It all comes to a horrible halt when Sara (the lead actress) and her family are in a horrible accident killing both her husband and her daughter. One year passes when Sara finally decides to get her life back on track. She meets up with her other women friends and they have already planned to go spelunking in an old cave in the middle of nowhere. When an entrance in the cave collapses they are all trapped and must figure another way out. What they don't know is what is lurking in the darkness waiting for them.
I was absolutely impressed with this film. "Dog Soldiers" was a good movie but this really shows just how good of a director Neil Marshall really is. The characters are built nicely so when they start to die you really feel awful. The big thing for me was just how incredible the lighting was in the movie. 90% of the movie they are underground and the lighting is done very realistically. The violence in the movie is outstanding and should wet any gorehounds appetite (myself included). What I have been reading recently is that the ending of the American version was heavily chopped and dumbed down for the American audience. Doesn't surprise me. Without giving anything away, the American ending does seem cliché and I already know how the original ending was suppose to be and it sounds much better. If you have a multi-regional DVD player get the British version on DVD! That is what I just got done doing.
Nevertheless, even though they dumbed the ending up for American audiences it was still a really great film. Get the British version and see the American theatrical release. 9/10