Product: The Descent (Original Unrated Cut) [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 3.0
A Big Downer
Thanks to a nerdy childhood, some uncreative bullies, and a gym locker, I have grown up with a mild case of claustrophobia. Thanks to a Baptist minister father and an upbringing replete with information on the Forces of Darkness, I have also grown up with a (possibly unhealthy) fascination of dark and unknowable creatures. On top of all of this, I like women. Hence, THE DESCENT, a film about a group of women who go spelunking in caves filled with nasty beasties is (ideally) right up my alley.The basic story I've already pretty much summarized, although I neglected to mention that one of the women lost her husband and child a year before the cave dive, a detail that gains and loses importance depending on how you choose to interpret the film's dreary head-scratcher of a conclusion. As the women battle with the creepy crawlies (and each other) in their search for a way out, their sanity (and the story) rapidly begins to fray.After puzzling over the film's final moments, I came up with an interpretation that I thought was sound, albeit disappointing. I visited discussion boards on both Amazon and IMDB to see what other explanations were being tossed around by viewers, and what I discovered was that the movie has so many avenues for interpretation, it's difficult to argue that any one of them are more or less valid than the other. The point being that even the director has said there are multiple ways to view the film.That sort of approach work quite well for dramas and even comedies, but in my opinion, psychological thrillers need some hedges around their possibilities, or else what you have falls prey to the old and dull It Was All A Dream cop-out. That's not exactly what you have here (I don't think so, anyways), but the end result is similar: why watch a film if you can argue that the entire thing is nothing but an artfully constructed fantasy?At times it is scary, and it is often grotesque. The creatures are well-done and the acting is great (the women, at times, are at least as scary as the cave cannibals), but without some kind of anchor in reality, the movie is little more than a bunch of "Boos!" and blood and a whole lot of confusion. If you like quizzical endings and open-ended plot questions, then I suggest you descend into the madness of DESCENT. Or you could just get some school bullies to trap you in a gym locker for an hour or so.