The Descent
The Descent is the perfect set-up for a horror movie. It starts out with the now-tired formula – six attractive women doing something dangerous. It takes a normal twist – one of them makes a seriously misguided error. Something bad happens – they’re trapped, with no way out, and no way to get help. This is normally the part where the killer/monster/virus/insane clown slaughters them all, one by one. But in most horror movies, the villain never has to deal with anyone who kicks nearly this much ass.
The story, for what it’s worth, revolves around Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), a young woman who’s dealt with way too much trauma in her young life. Year(s) earlier, Sarah was in a car accident that left her husband and her young daughter dead, something from which she still hasn’t fully recovered. As an attempt to further that recovery, she’s meeting five friends in the woods in America to go cave diving. They’ve always had a good time with this sort of thing, and it seems like just the right move to get Sarah back into life. Led by Juno (Natalie Mendoza), they arrive at camp for the night to drink and prep for the day ahead. There we see a little more of Sarah’s fractured emotional state, through her nightmares about the deaths of her family.
The next day, they head out for the entrance to the cave they’re going to explore. At first, it’s all more or less fun and easy, nothing the girls can’t handle. But when squeezing through a particularly tight passage, Sarah gets stuck and starts to freak out. Beth (Alex Reid) tries to help her through it and rejoin the others, difficult in the claustrophobic tunnel.
And then the damn thing starts to collapse.
They race out and regroup, now realizing that the entrance they came through has been sealed shut. It’s OK, because there are other entrances to the cave system they were talking about exploring… oops. We’re not in that cave system! Juno switched it last minute in order to make the trip more exciting, so that they could “discover” this system together and have a truly unique experience. Needless to say, this pisses everyone off, and the friendships start to strain under such a high-pressure situation.
And then they hear something. And see something. And it wants them out of its cave.
This is the flow of The Descent, done in brilliant fashion. Everything goes from fine to terrible in a matter of minutes – there’s no release before the tension builds again; every possible bad thing gets dumped on these women within a ten minute span. Writer/director Neil Marshall has no issue showing EXACTLY how bad this is getting, either. This is one of the most cringe-worthy horror films I’ve seen in some time, and not just for “the big scares.” In fact, more cringes come from real life injuries, accidents that put something outside the human body that has no reason to be outside the body. It’s gross, and really, really effective.
Read the rest at HBS!
The story, for what it’s worth, revolves around Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), a young woman who’s dealt with way too much trauma in her young life. Year(s) earlier, Sarah was in a car accident that left her husband and her young daughter dead, something from which she still hasn’t fully recovered. As an attempt to further that recovery, she’s meeting five friends in the woods in America to go cave diving. They’ve always had a good time with this sort of thing, and it seems like just the right move to get Sarah back into life. Led by Juno (Natalie Mendoza), they arrive at camp for the night to drink and prep for the day ahead. There we see a little more of Sarah’s fractured emotional state, through her nightmares about the deaths of her family.
The next day, they head out for the entrance to the cave they’re going to explore. At first, it’s all more or less fun and easy, nothing the girls can’t handle. But when squeezing through a particularly tight passage, Sarah gets stuck and starts to freak out. Beth (Alex Reid) tries to help her through it and rejoin the others, difficult in the claustrophobic tunnel.
And then the damn thing starts to collapse.
They race out and regroup, now realizing that the entrance they came through has been sealed shut. It’s OK, because there are other entrances to the cave system they were talking about exploring… oops. We’re not in that cave system! Juno switched it last minute in order to make the trip more exciting, so that they could “discover” this system together and have a truly unique experience. Needless to say, this pisses everyone off, and the friendships start to strain under such a high-pressure situation.
And then they hear something. And see something. And it wants them out of its cave.
This is the flow of The Descent, done in brilliant fashion. Everything goes from fine to terrible in a matter of minutes – there’s no release before the tension builds again; every possible bad thing gets dumped on these women within a ten minute span. Writer/director Neil Marshall has no issue showing EXACTLY how bad this is getting, either. This is one of the most cringe-worthy horror films I’ve seen in some time, and not just for “the big scares.” In fact, more cringes come from real life injuries, accidents that put something outside the human body that has no reason to be outside the body. It’s gross, and really, really effective.
Read the rest at HBS!
posted by Matt S. at
3:55 PM
1 Comments:
good review. i had no intention of seeing the descent. now, i might just have to give it a whirl.
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Anonymous, at 6:08 PM
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