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Review #196 of 365
Film: The Descent [R] 99 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $10.00
Where Viewed: United Artists Denver Pavilions Stadium 15, Denver, CO
When 1st Seen: Sneak Preview - 26 July 2006
Time: 8:00 p.m.
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Well, what has been missing thus far this summer is a true horror film that scares you to the bones. Check out this premise. Six rugged, adventurous, thrill-seeking, British women leave the cozy confines of the UK and head to the uncharted regions of the Appalachian Mountains to explore a cave most of them think has been written up in guide books for decades. One of the women, the self-anointed leader, Juno (Natalie Mendoza), has secretly plotted to take the group into a newly discovered cave so they might be the first to uncover its secrets and give it a name. The director, Englishman Neil Marshall best known for his feature film Dog Soldiers, was interviewed in a special pre-sneak presentation put on by the good folks of Fangoria Magazine, said this film, which he refers to as "Six Chick with Picks", was the coalescence in his mind of his three favorite horror films: Deliverance—because it's about a trip that goes all wrong; Aliens—because it's about really dark spaces and what they can conceal, and The Shining—because it's about a person going crazy. He continued by suggesting that the film is as much a literal descent into the cave as it is the figurative descent into madness. Given these details, you can imagine then, that once the six are inside the cave, things are going to start to go wrong. Sadly, I have to plant a big of negativism here and say that this is also the point where the plot started to go wrong as well.
"The Descent was…decent…regrettably [it] does not live up to expectations. Believe it or not, last August's The Cave was a bit better…gulp. "
The film actually begins, however, back in the UK where three of the six fearless women are white water river rafting. On the way home, in a shocking beginning befitting of the Final Destination Trilogy, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), her husband, and their precious daughter are in a horrifying accident. Juno, a year later, in a rather macabre way, justifies the significance of the USA caving expedition, in part, due to the mental pain Sarah endures. So, the women agree and arrive at a cabin for a night of 'who can drink the most bottles of Coors® Light' games and tell all each other's secrets. This is the only real time the audience receives in order to get to know these characters. The rest of the six-some includes: Beth (Alex Reid); Rebecca, played by the Dutch actress Saskia Mulder known for her role as Hilda from The Beach; Sam (MyAnna Buring); and Holly, played by Irish actress Nora-Jane Noone known for her role as Bernadette in The Magdalene Sisters. Each character fills a classic, horror film niche so you can predict pretty early on which one is going to die first and which one is going to try to save the day. It is a little more difficult to predict whom, if any, will survive; however, it is fun to try. So, sharply at 7:00 a.m., the group heads out with gear in two cars one which looks like a fairly tired Jeep® Cherokee and the other a shiny new BMW X5. They race like mad, with Sarah, especially enjoying her stint behind the wheel of the X5, and they arrive at a giant hole in the ground.
Plot Problem #1: We are supposed to believe that no one has ever gone down in this giant hole before?
So, Juno puts the cave guide in the glove box knowing she won't need it, and the group lowers themselves down into the cavern below. One by one they reach the floor and extol the beauty that surrounds them. The chemistry of the women is tenuous at times with Holly playing the role of the 'bad girl outlaw' who keeps pushing everyone's buttons. Next they maneuver through a space which Juno calls "the Pipe" to the next open cavern. This requires incredible physical endurance to crawl and shimmy through to reach the other side. A lunch break is followed by Sarah thinking she sees something in the cave. Dah, dah, dum. Everyone tells her she is seeing things.
Plot Problem #2: Haven't we seen this exact same plot formula about a million times? How is this ground-breaking?
The next part of the route is selected, and the group moves through another thin shaft, this one uncovered by the overly aggressive Holly. For some reason, Sarah is last to enter the thin shaft, and lo and behold, dah, dah, dum, she gets stuck and panics. Beth goes back to guide her and get her breathing. She calms down, but not without a rather off color joke, and starts to crawl forward just as, dah, dah, dum, the shaft collapses. Beth pulls her to safety but loses the extra rope bag in the process. Meanwhile, now the group is trapped inside the cave.
Plot Problem #3: Please, are we supposed to believe that this cave shaft has been stable for umpteen years and now suddenly caves in?
Well, at this point, Juno has to come clean and admit they are in an unmarked cave and the climb plan she submitted with the Forest Service was a phony.
Plot Problem #4: We are supposed to believe that no one really gets very upset with her?
They progress working sort of as a team a bit further until, then, finally, things really get bad, as if six women being trapped in a cave with no way out wasn't bad enough. Remember that thing that Sarah thought she saw? Well, yep, it wasn't her imagination, it was real. Dah, dah, dum. And you are probably going to burst out laughing when you learn that the thing that lives in the cave is really not just one thing but a whole clan of what a human family would evolve to look like after 1000s of years of living in an underground cave system.
Well, that's all of the plot I can give away at this point. I will continue to list some plot problems, however, that might give away some of the plot to those who are really clever, so skip this list if you worry about knowing too much about the film should you decide to see it.
Well, that's all of the plot I can give away at this point. I will continue to list some plot problems, however, that might give away some of the plot to those who are really clever, so skip this list if you worry about knowing too much about the film should you decide to see it.
Rest of the Plot Problems:
5) A chamber full of surface animal bones is found. Clearly, these hominids hunt on the surface, and no one in all of North Carolina has ever seen one of them before?
6) The hominids have lost their ability to see. This is common among cave-dwelling creatures. They still have eyes, but they are non-functioning. Great, but evolution is not that cruel, it doesn't weed out a useless sense without selecting for better and better versions of the others, so their sense of smell, taste, and hearing should all be heightened. There's no sign of that in these critters who walk right on top of and over two of the women hiding from them.
7) It takes a cave painting done by primitive peoples on the walls of the caves for Beth to realize there must be at least one more way out. Huh? These hominids are hunting on the surface. They are getting there somehow. And, wouldn't they likely have a bunch of ways out?
8) Cave paintings? Are we supposed to figure out that these hominids are the descendents of native people? Well, so much for the "We're the first people to see these caves" idea.
Neil Marshall may have been hoping to create Aliensesque terror, unfortunately, these hominids are frail and relatively easy to kill. He may have been hoping for the dark terror, but he uses too much light in the caves as to make there almost no sense of the women even being in the dark. They have lights, luminescent sticks, and flares in abundance. I never thought I'd say this in a million years because I really hated The Blair Witch Project—mostly because of the rather unsatisfying ending not because it wasn't scary--but the one thing that movie got right on the money was the concept of it being pitch black and how that is really scary to most people. I would say, with all due and proper respect to Mr. Marshall, that he really missed the mark here in what would have made this movie truly terrifying more than, perhaps, any other way. We have these women trapped in a cave, in pitch darkness, yet facing an enemy hell bent on cannibalizing them that doesn't need to be able to see. Wow, now that would have been really scary. But, Mr. Marshall does not use the darkness, and the film is nearly never dark. He may have been hoping for shades of The Shining, and instead he got flickers of Final Destination. There are no real signs of anyone going really crazy. I mean, the behavior is all pretty understandable due to the circumstances. I suppose that Juno commits one act that might be considered 'mad', but that's it. Everything else that happened seemed perfectly justifiable. As for the Deliverance piece, um, not quite there.
In conclusion, The Descent was a decent little horror film. It was by no means as horrifying as any of the three movies it admires. I hate to say it, but my heart rate barely accelerated even once. It might have skipped a beat during the one scene that I almost found most truly scary—the scene where one of the women volunteers to go first in crossing a seemingly bottomless chasm laying the safety line into the side of the wall without much extra rope and only a few of the wall clamps since the bag of extra rope and clamps has been lost—were it not for the fact that she struggles mightily to get across the barely 8 foot to 12 foot wide chasm. All I could think of was, "Why is a rugged, expert, outdoorswoman struggling on this fairly minor challenge? She'd be the first one voted out of my CBS® Survivor tribe." All tolled, this film, regrettably does not live up to expectations. Believe it or not, last August's The Cave was a bit better…gulp.
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Click for 'Review Lite' [a 150-word review of this film]
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Review-lite [150-word cap]
This summer has been without a scares-you-to-the-bones horror movie. Director, Neil Marshall, known for Dog Soldiers, tries to fill the void with The Descent, a film he says coalesces his three favorite horror flicks: Deliverance, Aliens, and The Shining. Six rugged, thrill-seeking, British women leave the comforts of home to go caving in uncharted regions of the Appalachian Mountains. The self-anointed leader, Juno (Natalie Mendoza), has secretly plotted to take the group into a newly discovered cave so they might be the first to uncover its secrets and give it a name. Sounds like a bad idea and turns out even worse as they endure a catastrophic cave-in and must eventually fight off an entire clan of blind, cave-evolved, cannibalistic, hominids. Pestered by major plot problems, Mr. Marshall misses the mark by not trusting the dark and delivers a film that is decently scary but not horrifying.
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