Product: The Descent (Original Unrated Cut) [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 4.0
The Descent...
This British low budget horror picture, like 28 Days Later, does something that horror films have not done in a long time, and that is scare the living crap out of the audience. The movie is marketed as "a movie from the same studio that released Hostel and Saw" as if it were a bad movie which needed all the helpful marketing it could get. Ironically this film is miles above and beyond the Saw and Hostel franchises, and if anything audiences who hated Saw and Hostel will be turned off from this. It's a real shame though because this film is what horror movies haven't, and should've been, for a long time.The story and plot are well conceived, and it seems that this horrific trip through an unexplored cave system in the mountains can be symbolic of the main character's struggle to overcome the demons of her past. The main character had lost her family in frightening car accident a year before, and has since been having hallucinations revolving around it. Taking it as it is though, the plot revolves around six females who go exploring a cave, when there is a collapse blocking one of the entrances. And so the girls must find another way out. However, disorientation, claustrophobia, and hallucinations begin to set in, making this a terrifying journey.This however is only the beginning. When you just thought it couldn't get freakier, being in a pitch black unknown environment, it appears that the six girls are not alone miles under the Earth, and so this is when the movie turns into an all-out monster movie. The humanoid monsters would scare the living s*** out of anyone who is watching this movie, they move like the zombies from 28 Days Later, and in an environment like a pitch black cave, it's all the more frightening.Stylistically the film uses the same grainy handheld look of 28 Days Later, amping up the disorientation, this combined with the harsh shadows and sharp contrasts of the flashlights used by the characters, creates a look and feel that strongly brings to mind moments from the Alien series. Especially shots where there is a closeup of moisture dripping from the jagged ceiling of the cave. And for anyone who is a fan of the Alien movies, the first shot of the "crawler" monster will have you feeling nostalgic.This movie is truly terrifying, as I've said before, something that Hollywood cinema's so-called "horror" movies have failed to do for a long time, ever since the MTV Generation of film-makers took over. British horror films seem to still have it, and it seems that they are even reimaging classic horror archetypes into something new and even more scary. Just look at how much more scary the fast-moving zombies of 28 Days Later are in comparison to the sluggish zombies of old. And with this one, look at how the film-maker has managed to take influence from a movie from 1979 and managed to make a film equally horrifying, and fresh-feeling, as opposed to the American tendency to remake old horror movies with little aesthetic merit. The Descent is an exceptional movie.