Saturday, August 26, 2006

Movie Review – The Descent

This is a pretty graphic, sometimes shocking horror film. If you like those kinds of films, I would recommend this one. A group of women, mostly Scottish and English as far as I could tell from the accents and the storyline, go spelunking for adventure in an unknown cavern. They get trapped inside and meet up with some very unpleasant predators. What these things are and where they came from is never really explained, but the set up makes you believe that they are descended from humans that got trapped in these caves eons ago and never made it out. These guys are nasty and really pretty hideous looking. The makeup department for this film did itself proud, as these things are truly scary and, in the dark caverns, very believable. The atmosphere in this film is dark, dank, and very, very claustrophobic. There were several scenes that I had trouble watching for that reason.

Like all modern horror films, this one does tend to go overboard trying to shock and scare the audience. Several times, the audience knew that something was going to jump out of the dark at someone on the screen, but we all jumped in their seats when it happened anyway. There’s lots of blood and gore, too much for my taste in films. The scene where the group is setting one of the women’s leg when she falls and ends up with a compound fracture was really difficult to watch. Although very realistic, it was also pretty gruesome. I’m not sure there was a reason to show that much of the goings-on. It didn’t add much to the story, as we all knew her leg was broken and she was in bad shape. It did, however, elicit moans and shaken comments from the girls sitting behind me in the theater.

Rated R for language, violence, and gore.

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