Everything a horror movie should be

Rating: 9/10 (8 August 2006)

'The Passion of the Christ' was the first R-rated movie I saw in theaters. 'The Descent' was the second. My reaction to the first was tears and a sense of fulfillment. My reaction to the second was shock and pure exhilaration. I'd have to say that they were both incredibly satisfactory reactions.
The first thing I noticed about this movie was how well everything was set up. There is a sense in the entire first half of the movie that something terrible will happen. Of course everyone who's seeing the movie knows to expect monsters and gore in the second half, and the filmmakers know we expect that. They fill the first 45 minutes or so with foreboding moments, some of them meant to make you jump, others just to creep you out. But of course, the characters in the movie don't know that something is coming; the filmmakers know that too, so they also fill the first part with scenes of laughter and moments of genuine friendship. The juxtaposition of these two tones in the first act of the movie does two things for the movie: it invests us in these interesting people and it gets us tense enough for when blood starts pouring.
But when the action starts, who really cares about juxtaposition? The action in this movie is so harrowing and intense that it was all I could do to cover my eyes. The gore is incredibly excessive, but I found myself not caring because it should be. We've been with these characters every step of the way- we've experienced claustrophobia with them, felt the fear of dangling over a bottomless pit with them, and when we get to the bloody scenes, they are just as appalled as we are by intestines being ripped out of stomachs. We feel what they feel and it makes for an incredibly interesting experience.
I suppose you could love this film just for its action, but I liked it for more than that. The characters were real and didn't fall into normal horror movie clichés. There was real human drama and it added another dimension to the action.
This is a brilliantly scary movie and I recommend it to anyone who loves to pee their pants.