Terror Lives in the Darkness

Rating: 8/10 (27 December 2006)

A group of friends out on vacation in the United States face what hides in remote cave deep within the mountains of rural North Carolina. While not a big budget film in anyway and lacking any major stars on this side of the Atlantic, The Descent manages to give a good horror film through suspension and not special effects or lots of blood as most American horror focus on.
Sarah (Shauna Mcdonald) lost her family a year ago due to a tragic accident. In an attempt to find healing, she agrees to a vacation in the states with friends Juno (Natalie Mendoza), Beth (Alex Reid), Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), Sam (Myanna Burning), and Holly (Nora-Jane No one). A group of experienced outdoors women, a trip in the mountains is something that should be without too much challenge or difficulty. Indeed, there is little to give warning for the terror they are about to face in the depths of the earth.
What makes The Desecent so good is that there really is little to it. Most of the film consists of Sarah and the others crawling through small caverns and roping over and down rock walls. When they do come face to face with the horror of the cave (troll like creatures), the movie consists with more crawling through caverns, falling into water pools, and/or being torn apart. A simple plot which actually works because The Descent demands really little from the story itself to give suspense. The suspense centers around the darkness that constantly surrounds them and the feeling that the deeper the go within in the earth, the more they are certain to face death. It was as if the cave itself was the main part of the script and everything else was written around it with that idea in mind.
Another positive was the actresses themselves. While none are major stars or even well known in the US, each held to their part. Again, it shows that a good movie doesn't need major stars to promise a good story. That Hollywood misses this so often says something more about the industry than those who write stories. Star power, in most cases, it what most movie center around and it as interesting to see one good movie where this was not the case.
If there is one complaint to be made its that the ending left more to be desired. While it is expected that none of them would escape, the movie could have been given more of a solid ending. The discovery that Juno was having an affair with Sarah's husband before his death was rather obvious but did little for the story overall because we really don't know much about it before the end. It would have been good to know more of the background of this relationship if the director and writer wanted it to be a more important conflict between Sarah and Juno.
A good movie if one wants a quick scare and a good example of how a horror movie should be made.
8/10