same old revisited for the n-th time (or: Brits touting their horn)

Rating: 3/10 (16 March 2008)

sorry, Brits - i know you want to praise your own movie, but let's be objective here: "descent" is nothing more that the n-th variation of the same old, same old. only instead of the old house/abandoned base/etc. you get badly-lit caves (ooh!). and instead of aliens/ghosts/etc. you get some "batmen" of sorts. and a bunch of hot cliff-hanging chicks. the rest is all jump-scares (you know the drill: sudden cues accompanied by loud FX), which is the cheapest and most annoying way of "shocking". plus, the dialog is filled with that stating-the-obvious bullsh*t like "we need to get out of here!", "we need to get to the other side!", etc. no sh*t, sherlock! that immediately gets me annoyed and insulted every time. the same goes for that whole "girl hears strange noises in a pitch-black tunnel and goes ALONE to see what it is (and, of course, gets attacked in a jump-scare)" nonsense that defies logic and is hackneyed beyond belief.
and the monsters? puh-lease. x-files stuff. although they make the same rattling noises like the predator. plus, are we to believe that the same monsters that hunt wolves and defy gravity can get their asses whooped at their HOME TERRITORY by a bunch of city chicks in a BMW with a penchant for "extreme" sports? come on. oh, yeah, i forgot - there's that whole "lord of the flies"/"the heart of darkness" angle, where primordial instincts take over and the girls unleash the beast within them (or the beast within us all, ooh!) and turn into fearless survival/killing machines, (***SPOILER!!!***) killing in the process some of their own. gee, now THAT'S a new angle.
there's a "hoax" ending which almost made me retch. but the real ending that follows is one of the only lights in this tunnel (pun intended). like we ever cared for any of the characters. two or three of them are clichéd, the rest are interchangeable.
having said that, "descent" IS better than any of the recent pretty-young-adults Hollywood "horrors", but being better than utter abomination ain't much of an achievement, is it? 3 stars for the absence of pretty but stupid teenagers, and for a semi-decent "build-up" before it all starts falling apart.
bring back the good old days of dread through subtlety!