Yet Another Media Post
I just got back from The Descent, which was one of the scariest movies I've ever seen.
It helps to know what kind of movie I think is scary. I don't watch slasher films, so no Freddy or Jason. Ghost Ship kept me up at night but wasn't very impressive in the watching; same with Thirteen Ghosts. Signs was pretty terrifying in theaters but didn't keep me awake at night. Disappearance and Them were just lame. Night of the Living Dead was seriously creepy, during and after, and 28 Days Later was really good but not very scary.
With that established. This has two things going for it, right off the bat: international accents and an all-female cast. (Well, okay, and a guy, for about a minute. There are guys in The Descent like there are girls in Master and Commander.) The characters were adorable. The beginning was slow and then, in a moment, completely gripping.
Like every other monster movie, it was much better before we saw the monsters, but the thing about these is that they are a) in the dark and b) everywhere. Once they get going, you can't go five feet without running into another monster. There are a lot of jump scenes that you'll see coming, but jump anyway. The first one almost brought the theater down.
Another thing about this movie: there is a lot of blood. A lot of blood. I differentiate between gore and blood: gore would be more solid body tissue. There's some of that, but there is blood by the bucket. There is an entire pool of blood at one point; not the kind you get when you cut your finger, but the kind you swim in. I can't emphasize this enough because if you faint at the sight of blood, you'll be out cold for the latter three-fourths of the movie.
Interestingly, I cut my ankle shaving today and dripped all over my carpet before I realized it. So it's been kind of a bloody day all around.
It was wonderful to see women on screen being smart, tough, fallible, and still women. You could have made the movie with a mixed or all-male cast, but it wouldn't have the same themes or the same relationships, and it would have missed out on a lot of amazing reactions from the characters. In thinking back, I can see a lot of feminine symbolism (the critters are mostly male, which is less relevant than it probably sounds--above all, they're foreign, inhuman).
I'm not 100% happy with the very ending, but I can't think of a better way to round out those last 15 seconds or so, so...they win this round, I guess. (E! says it was trimmed from the original UK ending. Now I'm jonesing for the original.) Interestingly, this is one of the few movies I've run across on Yahoo! where the critic rating was higher than the audience rating.
I have only ever been seriously concerned for my life three times: once in a cave and twice at the tops of cliffs. This movie makes me glad my caving days are behind me.
It helps to know what kind of movie I think is scary. I don't watch slasher films, so no Freddy or Jason. Ghost Ship kept me up at night but wasn't very impressive in the watching; same with Thirteen Ghosts. Signs was pretty terrifying in theaters but didn't keep me awake at night. Disappearance and Them were just lame. Night of the Living Dead was seriously creepy, during and after, and 28 Days Later was really good but not very scary.
With that established. This has two things going for it, right off the bat: international accents and an all-female cast. (Well, okay, and a guy, for about a minute. There are guys in The Descent like there are girls in Master and Commander.) The characters were adorable. The beginning was slow and then, in a moment, completely gripping.
Like every other monster movie, it was much better before we saw the monsters, but the thing about these is that they are a) in the dark and b) everywhere. Once they get going, you can't go five feet without running into another monster. There are a lot of jump scenes that you'll see coming, but jump anyway. The first one almost brought the theater down.
Another thing about this movie: there is a lot of blood. A lot of blood. I differentiate between gore and blood: gore would be more solid body tissue. There's some of that, but there is blood by the bucket. There is an entire pool of blood at one point; not the kind you get when you cut your finger, but the kind you swim in. I can't emphasize this enough because if you faint at the sight of blood, you'll be out cold for the latter three-fourths of the movie.
Interestingly, I cut my ankle shaving today and dripped all over my carpet before I realized it. So it's been kind of a bloody day all around.
It was wonderful to see women on screen being smart, tough, fallible, and still women. You could have made the movie with a mixed or all-male cast, but it wouldn't have the same themes or the same relationships, and it would have missed out on a lot of amazing reactions from the characters. In thinking back, I can see a lot of feminine symbolism (the critters are mostly male, which is less relevant than it probably sounds--above all, they're foreign, inhuman).
I'm not 100% happy with the very ending, but I can't think of a better way to round out those last 15 seconds or so, so...they win this round, I guess. (E! says it was trimmed from the original UK ending. Now I'm jonesing for the original.) Interestingly, this is one of the few movies I've run across on Yahoo! where the critic rating was higher than the audience rating.
I have only ever been seriously concerned for my life three times: once in a cave and twice at the tops of cliffs. This movie makes me glad my caving days are behind me.