Product: The Descent (Original Unrated Cut) [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 3.0
Spelunking with the Spice Girls CONTAINS SPOILERS
I did, and did not enjoy this film. As a BIG fan of Dog Soldiers, I have to say that it seems like the director wanted to go one direction, and the studio another. The first half of the film that deals with ONLY the aspect of claustrophobia, separation, and a sense of impending doom, and anything that can go wrong in a cave is unbelievably intense. The thought of being hundreds of feet underground with a titanic amount of rock overhead is a terrifying concept. Then add being in a tunnel only high and wide enough to crawl through on your stomach, and THEN hearing the Earth rumble. Then after you escape the rockslide, you find out that you're in a cave that is not mapped and nobody is coming to look for you. Sounds intense? It is, and the director conveys it masterfully. Then for some reason, bat-people are thrown into the mix. Not just any bat-people, but blind, blundering, soft-skulled bat-people that are wearing the same costumes as the Ubervamp and The Master, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not kidding, EXACTLY the same. For me, it really took the focus off of the true terror of the cave itself, and placed the focus on a threat that was really far fetched. I have a hard time believing that a race of cave-dwelling bat-people has occupied a cave system for, according to the film at least 100 years, going unnoticed in the Appalachian Mountains in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?! It derails the attention from the isolation, claustrophobia, and terror of being trapped in the cave. Additionally, the monsters are shown WAY too much. The viewer can easily become desensitized since the beasts are forced constantly in the field of vision. The ending is very anticlimactic, and the "dark secret" that one of the women is harboring is painfully apparent from the first scene of the film. Overall, this film is worth a look, only one though.