(2005) ***
We start The Descent with a scene of white water rafting - which everyone survives. Not everyone survives the ride home, however. Leading our cast of heroines is Sarah, followed by her good friend, Beth and her shady friend, Juno - who may or may not be sleeping with Sarah's husband. Their are three others as well that really don't even need to be named.
Juno has brought them all together for another extreme "Girl's Get Together," this time for some spelunking deep in the caves of the Appalachian Mountains. They are under the impression that they are going to Boreham Caverns, but in fact Juno decides to take them to an uncharted cave so they can "discover" it. They find out this handy fact after a cave-in makes it impossible for them to go back the way they came and they must keep going forward to try to find a way out.
Then, the Crawlers show up. Who are the Crawlers you ask? Well, according to the director, Neil Marshall, "cave men that never left the cave; they've evolved over thousands of years, living down there in families. They've lost their eyesight; they have acute hearing and smell; and they function perfectly in the pitch black."
I find this quote kind of interesting since there were several scenes that played up the blindness of the Crawlers - passing by one of the girls who was just laying really still, for example - but didn't really touch on the fact that their sense of smell was super developed. I mean, he's standing ON TOP of her - AND SHE'S ALIVE!
These women have been crawling around a cave for several hours, they would have been smelly to say the least.
There are some interesting twists and a couple good jumps when the Crawlers first appear. Although there were some good fight scenes where the chicks really kick some Crawler ass, I was expecting more action; the death and mayhem doesn't really start to happen until the last 45 minutes. I also felt like they tried too hard to make this a Chick Flick Horror movie. I mean we even have the obligatory pajama scene.
"Oh, ha-ha-ha. This time tomorrow we'll all be dead!"
6 comments:
I liked this better than you did but I gotta compliment you on your movie choices. Also, any effort at "easing in" with Shaun of the Dead is pretty much blasted off its tracks by watching this bit of dreadful.
Thanks, I don't really have any strategy other than picking up movies that have caught my eye in the past.
Terrific review. I too liked this more than you. Some of my favorite scenes involve the women exploring the impossibly tight caverns with barely enough room to breathe. The idea that people do that for sport amazes me. My sport is Horrorthon, baby.
I did like it. Maybe I was overly harsh as it was 1am in the morning.
This movie did absolutely confirm my suspicion that cave exploring is nothing that I would ever want to do.
Coincidentally, Lauren and I watched this one last night! Lauren's actually planning a review for it. She could relate to the lure of spelunking. (She's running a 50 mile trail run next weekend.)
Has anyone else reviewed it in the past? If not, why hasn't anyone reviewed this in the past?
Welcome to Horrorthon DCD! I'm happy to see that you were able to fend off Gretchen's curses.
I reviewed it before the Horrorthon last year. Read it here, but only if you've seen it. It's super spoiler-heavy.
Watching a movie so late everything gets weird and blurry is another Horrorthon tradition.
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