Movie Review: The Descent

8/10

Right first off. Do no research on this film if you haven't seen it. None at all. Find it, and watch it. Don't watch trailers, don't read the DVD case. Don't LOOK at the DVD case. Just basically try and watch it cold and it'll be a lot more effective.

There is a certain trend of giving the game away - think how much better Psycho would have been if you didn't already know the ending (it was spoiled for me by endless spoofing). I don't want to add to it.

The Descent then is a scary scary film.

Funny story - my brother took one of his girlfriends to see The Descent as their first date. he thought it was a girl focused action film, presumably in the "Touching The Void" vein.

Let me put it this way: he was dead wrong.

This review will contain no spoilers as to how he was wrong. Suffice to say that he was.

It's directed by Dog Soldiers director, Neil Marshall, and is another ensemble cast piece, in this case all women, in which things look bad and suddenly get a hell of a lot worse.

The Descent starts sort of incongruously, above ground on a river. Three friends are whitewater rafting, which seems to consist of nearly dying, and then saying "wooo" a lot. So far so good, a lot of female hormone on display, woo!!!

This mood doesn't last long since on the drive home, our apparent heroine, Sarah, finds herself in an RTC and loses her husband and child as a result. Harsh. That doesn't really count as a spoiler, since it's in the first five minutes, right?

The first time I saw this film, I thought that whole sequence was just a bit of a cheat, a filmmaker's realisation that he had very little actually happen in the first half hour of his film and wanted to do something outrageous in the first few minutes to grab the attention. On second viewing I find myself finding a good argument against my initial assessment. Sarah's loss actually informs very well her development later in the film and explains a large amount of her later anger and torment. Woo, indeed.

So we do the mandatory "year later" thing and she's off on her comeback tour to America with her mate Beth, on their way to meet the third rafter, Juno, who is taking them spelunking (cave diving is the synonym, but spelunking sounds funnier). There are also three others on the trip, two seemingly Scandinavian ladies, and an Irish ladette by the name of Holly. Add this to the American Juno, Scottish Sarah and the English Beth and you have five or six different accents. Above ground this is a little distracting and irritating, but soon you realise that in the virtual darkness underground it is pretty much essential as an assist on who is who.

Seems the ladies are going to a cave which is a little boring, a little "tourist trap" that may as well have handrails for Holly, who veers perilously close to an extreme sports cliché at times. Juno has other ideas, seemingly, and soon the girls are off the map and getting into some very nasty tight tunnels and scrapes as a result.

I am a little claustrophobic at the best of times, and the cave diving crowd simply send me crazy! Why oh why do this? How can the "fun" outweigh the hideous risks of dying in a rockslide or (and I find this conception infinitely worse) being trapped underground with no way back out the way you came? Madness! It's madness I tell you!

Ah well, guess what happens to our little underground adventuresses? Yup.

They have to find a way out the hard way, by voyaging into unknown territory. This is a great idea for a scary film, and the sheer amount of tension built up in something as simple and tangible as a small cramped passage is truly brilliant, and Marshall and his gang deserve muchos credit for their work.

That this is not all that happens is the films great trick, and if you haven't had it spoiled for you already (like I did) then see the film quick before anyone tells you any more. Don't even read the rest of the review.

Hints? Nah, only that one of the characters warns the others about "paranoia, hallucinations" and the like. It's really bloody good.

The acting, while of above average quality, sits in a firm second place behind the direction and cinematography here. I mean, how much acting is required to look scared in a cramped space in the middle of pitch blackness? The direction is great, the whole thing is just very polished. It's not going to change the world of movies but is a fine example of how to make an effective piece of tense cinema. This is only hightened by the shift into what seems like real time once things REALLY go off the rails.

So... I've hampered myself by reviewing a film that I don't really want to spoil, when my only problem is with a certain cynicism about the ending, and the choice to allow a sequel to be made (which for me is as bad as making a Cloverfield sequel) so my advice is, if you like your movies small scale and very creepy then this is a great film for you.

If you can't avoid having it spoiled (say, by the IMDB entry which gives the game away in one sentence) then you will still enjoy it. I did, both times.

A

P.S. If you ever can;t remember the name of a book like "Touching The Void", like I did, use a search engine. I just put in the words "famous book mountain climber cut rope" and it came up. Great!