Two different movies

Rating: 8/10 (9 June 2007)

This film exists in two very different versions. The original British version, which is about three minutes longer, and an edited version released in the United States. The edit, which removed the original's ending, was, in my opinion, akin to castration. The final three minutes of this film are a shattering visual kenning that elevates "The Descent" from what would otherwise have been a very well-crafted but still fairly clichéd monsters-in-the-dark movie into a great horror film. It alone added at least one star to my rating. I understand that the original edit is now available on US DVD. If you live in the US and have never seen "The Descent" before, demand that you receive that version.
"The Descent" is not without flaws. The story is an anachronism that has existed in some form or other since Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" and was given its first modern reworking by such films as "Deliverance" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." A group of headstrong individuals make their way to a lonely, isolated place, and are gradually picked off one by one by a malevolent, relentless force. In this case, the headstrong individuals are an all-female group of adrenaline junkies led by Juno (played by Australian rock star Natalie Jackson Mendoza), a slim, acrobatic Lara Croft-wannabe with guts of steel and an ego of titanium, and Sarah, (Shauna MacDonald) a fragile, haunted woman still recovering from a senseless personal tragedy. The isolated place is that ultimate of isolated places: a cave system somewhere under the Appalachians (one of several oblique nods to "Deliverance"). The force that ultimately forms their nemesis is a hungry tribe of carnivorous, batlike anthropoids waiting for them in the depths.
The group, all in the name of helping Sarah forget her pain, decide to take a day spelunking. Things start to get fishy when Juno very deliberately leaves the map of the system in the truck. When, miles beneath the Earth, they are trapped by a cave in, the girls soon realise that Juno has led them into an unknown system, and that they have no idea how to get out. Then the shrieks begin. At this point, suspension of a great deal of disbelief is required: genuine cavers will doubtless cringe at the characters' basic lack of knowledge of their supposed calling, and evolutionary biologists might puzzle over the creatures' plausibility. But these are nitpicks. The reason this film works (and works well) is because director Neil Marshall (who made the excellent "Dog Soldiers"), for all the lunacy of the concept, plays it absolutely, totally straight. There is not a knowing wink to be seen or a pithy catchphrase to be heard. These women are not superheroes, nor are they screaming claw-fodder. They are genuine people acting as people would in impossible and increasingly insane situation. The performances are committed, the setting as realistic as possible (the caves were entirely created in a studio set, but people have posted on this film's message board asking which system it was filmed in) and every chance is taken to evoke every possible human phobia (this movie plays the tension, grinding exertion, and sickening claustrophobia of its environment so effectively that the monsters are almost unnecessary).
This film's first act plays like a tragic domestic drama, as the girls meet and trade subsurface animosities during a night round the fireplace. Its second act plays like a subterranean version of "Touching the Void", as friendships break down and anger rises in the face of incredible physical hardship. The final act evokes all the best examples of this genre, from Chainsaw to Alien, and even Robert Wise's The Haunting. And like I said, the final scene elevates this movie to a higher level, and indeed, echoes the terrifyingly uncertain ending of the first of its kind, "Ten Little Indians".