Scary? Yes. Original? Not by a long shot.

Rating: 7/10 (7 August 2006)

I'm tempted to rate this higher than I'm going to because it's so rare that a horror movie is genuinely scary. When it's at its best, The Descent is extremely blood-curdling. Don't read any further if you don't want spoilers (though they are light spoilers, they are nonetheless spoilers). It also avoids effectively my pet peeve in horror movies: the women characters (and the major characters in this film are all women) don't fight back like wusses. Most women in thrillers and horror movies whack their enemy on the head once and then run away. These ladies know that if they don't give it their all, they'll be dead. So, anyway, it's a horror movie that's scary and not stupid. What's not to love? My problem was that writer/director Mashall goes out of his way to hit every cliché in the book. It may be effective, but it's far from original. A lot of the film is just Aliens, and that final shock is total J-horror. Most of the scares are achieved by the cheap "boo" tactic. The film is much more effective when it isn't deafening us with musical stings. The entire prologue feels extraneous, and there isn't even a pay-off that involves it. The film really should have just started with the six women meeting at the cabin the night before the spelunking. They would have lost 20 minutes, but that resulting 80 minute horror film would have been better. The characters in general are pretty weak. They aren't as bad as your run-of-the-mill horror flick, but they aren't that much better, either. Still, it works and it's well worth seeing. Definitely see it in the dark if you do.