Product: The Descent (Original Unrated Cut) [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 4.0
I Love Multi-Meaning Titles
This was truly a horrifying movie to experience and I do mean experience with a capital E! Many others here have already outlined the plot so I'm just going to give you what I enjoyed about this little film that will be a classic one day.The title alone is very clever as it refers to both the physical descent into the cave, but also the descent into madness. If that isn't enough, it suggests the descent of mankind itself as we watch these "friends" turn on each other.The dialogue and character interactions are extremely believable and played out by a brilliant cast of unknowns. The effects are minimal, but good. This film and story relies much more on anticipation, fear, suspense, and dread than anything tangible even though there is considerable blood and gore at key moments in the film that are certainly not for the squimish. In addition, the claustrophic elements of the film are enhanced when viewing this film at home. My wife and I watched this at midnight in our basement home theater room and I found myself needing air . . . desperately!I always like to check out what a film costs to make and I'm always impressed at how some writers, actors and directors can create a terrific film if they put more heart and soul into it than money. This film only cost about $4 million to make and earned nearly $30 million. That is a very nice profit and well deserved. The lastest Rocky film cost $24 to make and earned $100+ million. Movie producers would be wise to take a lesson from these smaller, but more artfully crafted films.One Compliant: The audio of the film (or DVD) could have been better. Many times my wife and I had to backtrack over what someone said. It seemed to be a combination of poor quality audio or DVD transfer and the strong accents of the English/Scottish actors as those folks have a terrible tendency to "swallow" their words (meaning words or phrases, particular near the end of sentences, can be inaudible or suffer from slurring). I guess one could put on the English subtitles to read what they say, but that can be distracting.