Product: The Descent (Original Unrated Cut) [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 4.0
That's one ladies night out I don't want to be in.
"The Descent" is a good movie in almost every way. The tension and claustrophobia of being trapped in an unknown cave system is palpable. The previous movie of Neil Marshall was, in essence, a black comedy. There is none in here. Everything is horrifying, terrifying, thrilling and scary. Six girls trapped underground and a common enemy. This film brought two things to mind while I was watching it, Aliens and the Thing, these two movies set the bar when it comes to atmosphere, and this above all others is key to a good horror film. Neil Marshall seems to be a master of this, in an era when great horror films are tough to come by. From the very beginning this movie grabs you by your collar and doesn't let go. It seems to place right in the mix of everything that is happening, and emotion, what was the last horror film anyone has seen that had emotional attachment to its characters.The gore comes pretty hot and heavy in the second half of the film, and the ending of the film is appropriately surprising and bleak, without being corny. Another big plus in my book is that the "creature" FX aren't over-the-top and don't rely on much, if any CGI. When I first heard that "The Descent" was a "creature" film, I was kind of worried because I feel that those types of films have gone severely down-hill with the advent of the over-use of CGI...but this film doesn't fall into that category. Some of the acting isn't the greatest but it doesn't really detract from the film overall, and some seem to think that the first half of the film is slow. Personally, I think that the early sequences in the caves are a great "tension-builder" as things go from bad-to-worse, and right when you think it can't go any lower, the audience is clued in to the existence of the other "inhabitants" of the caves and all hell breaks loose. "The Descent" is a pretty good horror film and shouldn't be ignored.