Neil Marshall should direct a Doctor Who episode.... Hallowe'en Time Review (4)
Written: Oct 19 '05 (Updated Oct 19 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: highly scary and stimulating, very well acted, involving, unpredictable
Cons: ending, fails to retain noticeable staying power on first viewing.
The Bottom Line: A little Hallowe'en treat (if they release it in America by then)
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| sadgit's Full Review: The Descent |
I must give thanks to millinocket for adding this film to the database.
This film was released in Britain three months ago and is soon coming to DVD over here too, but has not yet been given an American release. Maybe they might give it a Hallowe'en release.
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Neil Marshall's (director of "Dog Soldiers") intense horror film "The Descent" concerns an all-female troupe of six British potholers who decide to take a chance on an unmapped cave in the middle of nowhere- these lasses sure love danger. What they find is a descent into the savages of what could very well be the literal bowels of hell itself.
In what has been a less than stellar year for horror movies, "The Descent" stands head over heels as a high quality voyage into terror. When we are first introduced to the group of women, there's such an air of spontaneous, fun-loving, quick-fire, intense, dareing and highly stimulated personalities that you immediately know that this is going to be a special brand of horror because it is going to take something pretty massive to get these kind of characters to shake in their boots.
There are no false scares or dumb blunders. The characters here are intelligent and very driven. When they arrive in danger it is a case of maintaining logic over heart so that they don't panic in their pitch-black, claustrophobic, beast-infested fortress. Some manage to keep their heads and do their best to out-think the problem but can only keep their heads for so long, they are intelligent but not infallible and can make mistakes and miscalculations. What guided them into this dangerous situation in the first place wasn't any teenage stupid naivety but a Generation X, relentless desire to dare everything, for the sake of experience, for pushing themselves to limits whilst they're alive and young, in the knowledge that life is short. I like the fact that the film grounds itself in a very real modern philosophy.
When the characters find themselves in the dark bowells of the Earth, minimal lighting keeps us quite literally in the dark, fighting blind against quick moving savages. The flare lighting casting hidden shadows and treacherous caverns, and making the setting feel almost like an alien world. The violence in the movie is completely unforewarned and assaulting- the kind of violence that feels like it could poke your eye out. Basically its a horror movie meets The Poseidon Adventure with many nautral dangers and challenges taxing the characters to their limits. With a lot of ocular imagery- a close-up of the iris at the moment of death, a lot of agonising and vivid physical endurance- a broken leg being snapped back together for instance, the film is immediately involving, making for what is a vivid cinema experience (and I suspect not much would be lost when it is released on DVD, as long as you watch it with the lights out).
The basic message of the film is that for all the modern clique talk of pushing ourselves to our limits and dares, treating the gift of life simultaneously like something that we can enrich or discard for ourselves, we forget that life is actually a very fragile thing which is more important than our life being short. We should preserve life and not play dangerous games- yes it is wonderful when we can brave danger and live to tell the tale, but if we don't live to tell the tale, what then? So many things just aren't worth the risks, and certainly doing these things for the risks alone is very, very misguided.
Whilst these are not initially amoral characters, when these people who relentlessly gravitate to secularist searches for stimulation, self-courage and meaning, they find themselves abandoning their moral anchors and when confronted with savage creatures, the characters behave in a similarly savage way inreaction. Lets just say that in the ensuing panic, not all the deaths are caused by the beasts. We understand and sympathise as to why, but it doesn't change the fact that an innocent life has been lost and wasted.
Overall the acting is very authentic and the dialogue and perceptions are very sharp. The situation is very involving, and the ensemble presence of no-name actresses makes it compellingly unpredictable who will live and who will die. The picture quality is sharp and the lighting effectively limits what is in view, making us wonder of what is to pounce. There is not a single one of the many jump scares that fails. But alas I can't give it full five star marks.
For all that edge-of-the-seat terror, vividness and savage assaulting, sensor sharpening atmosphere and repartee, the film has an overall indefineable subliminal quality- so sharp its thin, that makes the viewer feel unaware if they've experienced anything by the end. It can leave you rather malnourished and needing to see the film again, and certainly some people are understandably resistant to that kind of subliminal effect. Another disadvantage is the ending that could barely compete with the grandness of what preceeded it and kind of just fizzles out.
So overall its a four-star rating.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
sadgit
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Member: Tom
Location: Lancashire, United Kingdom
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