The Descent (2005/Theatrical Film Review)

 

Stars: Shauna MacDonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Nora-Jane Noone

Director: Neil Marshall

Critic's rating: 5 out of 10

 

Review by Chuck O'Leary

 

One of the best horror films of the decade thus far is writer-director Neil Marshall's, Dog Soldiers, a low-budget British variation of John McTiernan's Predator about a group of British commandos on maneuvers in the woods who come under attack by some particularly lethal werewolves.  Dog Soldiers (reviewed elsewhere on this site), though, didn't even get a theatrical release in American theaters.  I saw it at the recommendation of a friend on video in 2002, and was so pleased by the film's relentless intensity that I bought the DVD shortly thereafter.

 

Marshall's second feature film is The Descent, which opened in Britain in July, 2005, and has been available on Region 2 DVD for months.  It turns out America is one of the last places on the globe to get The Descent, and during the year it's taken to get here, I've been tempted several times to purchase the PAL DVD.  But after finally seeing The Descent, I'm glad I didn't shell out at least $25 American dollars for the foreign DVD, even though I'm told it has a different ending.

 

Despite lots of great advance buzz, The Descent didn't live up to my expectations, which might have been too high as a result of how much I enjoyed Dog Soldiers.  To my disappointment, The Descent only works marginally better than last August's similar creature feature, The Cave.

 

The Descent shares the same premise with The Cave.  Both are about groups of people who descend into deep, dark underground caverns where they're unexpectedly attacked by bloodthirsty mutants; the only differences being the main characters in The Descent are all women, and Marshall's film contains a lot more bloodshed.  A friend seemed convinced the six female friends who go cave exploring in The Descent are lesbians, which is possible even though it's never directly stated or any kind of sexual contact is shown --a secret lesbian affair or crush is the only way to explain the way one character troublingly turns on another near the end.

 

After a sluggish first half-hour or so, The Descent becomes quite watchable as the women become lost inside an uncharted North Carolina cavern and discover they're the food source for some sort of carnivorous humanoids.  But the film just seems too derivative of other creature features, and it remains all too obvious which of the six women will survive.

 

The Descent has enough blood to please gore hounds, but it can't hold a candle to a scarier movie from earlier this year featuring mutant humanoid villains, the gripping remake of The Hills Have Eyes.