The Descent: 4 out of 5
Thank god for strong women in movies. Thank god for developed characters, interesting action scenes, and moody filmmaking. Thank god for realistic responses to unreal situations. In short, thank god for Neil Marshall and "The Descent."
Don't believe the unfortunate ad campaign that the studio execs have shoved onto TV; if you love gore and torture, a la "Hostel" and "Saw," you'll be disappointed in this film. It isn't ridiculously bloody . . . rather, it's just bloody enough at all the right moments, and it lets the imagination do the work most of the time. Sure, there are some terrible death scenes, some horrible situations that make the audience wince for the characters' sake, but the camera doesn't revel in it. It tells you it's about to happen, or shows you that it just did happen, and lets you fill in the blanks. This is a survival thriller more than a horror-fest, or at least the better parts of it are.
The movie's prologue includes character-driven tension and psychological horror, as well as one of the aforementioned terrible death scenes, slightly over-the-top for my taste. The film then moves on to the present day. The situation: three friends, all women, gather together for a challenge/vacation/reunion, one year after one of them, Sarah, has lost her husband and daughter in a car accident. Hints are dropped early and often suggesting that Sarah's husband was also very important to Juno, the vacation's organizer and the "adventurous" one.
So, take a bunch of friends with some shrouded history, each of them bringing along a sidekick/pal/sibling, and put them in an unexplored cave in the Appalachians. Oh, and one of them is potentially schizophrenic. That by itself gives you plenty of room for thrills and character development. And in fact, the most enjoyable parts of the movie take place with just those elements. The man-eating (or rather, woman-eating) subterranean monsters, as is so common in good horror movies, are just the catalyst.
Unlike many "the monster within" films, though, this one never leaves you feeling that one of the characters is completely selfish or evil. It never pins all the blame on one idiot, (although Juno purposefully leading them into an unsafe, unexplored cave is pretty damn stupid . . . and her protege, Holly, is supremely annoying). You don't wish them ill, and they're real enough that their faults can be empathized with rather than despised. This sets up the audience to feel, like the characters, a driving need for teamwork and survival rather than blame. But we can't quite forget the disappointment and judgment simmering beneath the surface, the little whispers of doubt and anger that would make the difference between, for instance, who you would save and who you would leave to die. And it's a good bet that our characters can't forget them either.
There are a few cases in this movie of "too much." Holly, the brash young adventure-seeker brought in by Juno, is one of them. Her character, her dialog, her actions, they're all just too much. She's the only caricature in the movie, but even she is forgivable, because there truly are adrenaline junkies just like her: all talk and no substance. They try incredibly hard to make sure that everyone knows how "extreme" they are, but they do so because they lack social confidence. So in her case, it's simply a matter of an actress seeming fake because her character is, essentially, fake.
Another thing the movie has too much of is the sheer number of bad guys themselves, as well as too much exposition regarding what they are. By the movie's end we've seen over a dozen of the things, which would seem to make quite a dent in the local large-animal ecosystem. The future doctor of the group also explains, in full science teacher style, what the creatures' capabilities are and how they evolved "perfectly to hunt in the darkness." First of all, nothing evolves "perfectly." It evolves enough to get by. Secondly, they don't seem to hunt in the darkness, so much as live down there between going to the surface and hunting deer, elk, wolves, and other large animals. Finally, there's one female in the bunch, almost thrown in there as if to say "See, a working society of strange critters!" But you only need one male to impregnate dozens of females . . . I hope that poor withered old cave troll didn't have to give birth to all of those predators by her lonesome.
And I don't much buy that these guys can engage in hand-to-hand fights and agile leaping about in caves, not to mention hunting large animals, if they don't have really, really, really good senses other than sight. But their senses of smell and their "sonar" seems pretty damn ineffective when their prey holds still, and one of them doesn't even notice the warmth of a burning torch a few feet away from it.
Finally, Marshall makes too much use of the shock cut scene: a metal rod sticking out of the back of someone's head, a nightmare of a girl turning to reveal her face as that of a monster, and a hallucination popping up next to our protagonist . . . none are as amazingly effective as the flashlight catching a shadow during one slow pass of the cave but revealing only rock wall when it moves back, or the brilliantly used infrared digital camera held by Sarah, panning over the group, and revealing a monster standing behind them in the darkness.
On the other hand, there were also a few "not enough"s. If you're going to introduce the idea of a subterranean predator, why not up the authentic meter by having them act like true predators? Real predators don't engage in hand-to-hand fights in which they can be hurt, or at least not if they can help it . . . the risk of death from injury and infection is far too high. How about pack tactics? How about tentative prodding of the prey, becoming bolder and bolder over time. How about them fleeing when wounded, only to attack in a rage when the heroes accidentally stumble into the heart of their nest, or out of a sense of vengeance for one of their own? This dose of realism would have the added benefit of upping the "we're being hunted" sense of the film, only adding to the terror.
Another "not enough" is the intriguing exploration of Sarah's psychosis. We're warned during the hike to the cave mouth that paranoia, dementia, hallucination, all of these are possible in a cave, but there're far too many actual, physical monsters and not enough imagined ones, especially from Sarah's point of view. Everything from her hallucination after losing her daughter and husband to unidentified pills beside her nightstand to the sound of a young girl's laughter in the caves suggest that she is schizophrenic; this could've been a huge source of tension and nightmarish imagery for the film, but it's only briefly alluded to. We as the audience are never forced to question what is real and what is imagined, which can be a horrific experience all by itself. Also, the movie suggests that Sarah was a fine, normal woman until the car accident. People get depressed when they lose loved ones, they begin having nightmares, but stressful situations and senses of loss don't cause schizophrenia or hallucinations. At worst, they might trigger episodes in someone already prone to such mental illness. I'd happily have traded the silly "perfectly evolved predators" speech in the cave for a throwaway conversation alluding to Sarah's mental issues during the opening rafting sequence, perhaps even hinting that such issues were what drove her husband into one of her friend's arms.
But I'll forgive Marshall for the faults above, because the basics of a fine thriller with compelling characters, great imagery, and fantastic pacing were all there to outweigh them. The movie sticks with you, and even more than it makes you want to stay away from caves, it makes you question how much you can trust those around you. In short, it gets inside your head.
Don't believe the unfortunate ad campaign that the studio execs have shoved onto TV; if you love gore and torture, a la "Hostel" and "Saw," you'll be disappointed in this film. It isn't ridiculously bloody . . . rather, it's just bloody enough at all the right moments, and it lets the imagination do the work most of the time. Sure, there are some terrible death scenes, some horrible situations that make the audience wince for the characters' sake, but the camera doesn't revel in it. It tells you it's about to happen, or shows you that it just did happen, and lets you fill in the blanks. This is a survival thriller more than a horror-fest, or at least the better parts of it are.
The movie's prologue includes character-driven tension and psychological horror, as well as one of the aforementioned terrible death scenes, slightly over-the-top for my taste. The film then moves on to the present day. The situation: three friends, all women, gather together for a challenge/vacation/reunion, one year after one of them, Sarah, has lost her husband and daughter in a car accident. Hints are dropped early and often suggesting that Sarah's husband was also very important to Juno, the vacation's organizer and the "adventurous" one.
So, take a bunch of friends with some shrouded history, each of them bringing along a sidekick/pal/sibling, and put them in an unexplored cave in the Appalachians. Oh, and one of them is potentially schizophrenic. That by itself gives you plenty of room for thrills and character development. And in fact, the most enjoyable parts of the movie take place with just those elements. The man-eating (or rather, woman-eating) subterranean monsters, as is so common in good horror movies, are just the catalyst.
Unlike many "the monster within" films, though, this one never leaves you feeling that one of the characters is completely selfish or evil. It never pins all the blame on one idiot, (although Juno purposefully leading them into an unsafe, unexplored cave is pretty damn stupid . . . and her protege, Holly, is supremely annoying). You don't wish them ill, and they're real enough that their faults can be empathized with rather than despised. This sets up the audience to feel, like the characters, a driving need for teamwork and survival rather than blame. But we can't quite forget the disappointment and judgment simmering beneath the surface, the little whispers of doubt and anger that would make the difference between, for instance, who you would save and who you would leave to die. And it's a good bet that our characters can't forget them either.
There are a few cases in this movie of "too much." Holly, the brash young adventure-seeker brought in by Juno, is one of them. Her character, her dialog, her actions, they're all just too much. She's the only caricature in the movie, but even she is forgivable, because there truly are adrenaline junkies just like her: all talk and no substance. They try incredibly hard to make sure that everyone knows how "extreme" they are, but they do so because they lack social confidence. So in her case, it's simply a matter of an actress seeming fake because her character is, essentially, fake.
Another thing the movie has too much of is the sheer number of bad guys themselves, as well as too much exposition regarding what they are. By the movie's end we've seen over a dozen of the things, which would seem to make quite a dent in the local large-animal ecosystem. The future doctor of the group also explains, in full science teacher style, what the creatures' capabilities are and how they evolved "perfectly to hunt in the darkness." First of all, nothing evolves "perfectly." It evolves enough to get by. Secondly, they don't seem to hunt in the darkness, so much as live down there between going to the surface and hunting deer, elk, wolves, and other large animals. Finally, there's one female in the bunch, almost thrown in there as if to say "See, a working society of strange critters!" But you only need one male to impregnate dozens of females . . . I hope that poor withered old cave troll didn't have to give birth to all of those predators by her lonesome.
And I don't much buy that these guys can engage in hand-to-hand fights and agile leaping about in caves, not to mention hunting large animals, if they don't have really, really, really good senses other than sight. But their senses of smell and their "sonar" seems pretty damn ineffective when their prey holds still, and one of them doesn't even notice the warmth of a burning torch a few feet away from it.
Finally, Marshall makes too much use of the shock cut scene: a metal rod sticking out of the back of someone's head, a nightmare of a girl turning to reveal her face as that of a monster, and a hallucination popping up next to our protagonist . . . none are as amazingly effective as the flashlight catching a shadow during one slow pass of the cave but revealing only rock wall when it moves back, or the brilliantly used infrared digital camera held by Sarah, panning over the group, and revealing a monster standing behind them in the darkness.
On the other hand, there were also a few "not enough"s. If you're going to introduce the idea of a subterranean predator, why not up the authentic meter by having them act like true predators? Real predators don't engage in hand-to-hand fights in which they can be hurt, or at least not if they can help it . . . the risk of death from injury and infection is far too high. How about pack tactics? How about tentative prodding of the prey, becoming bolder and bolder over time. How about them fleeing when wounded, only to attack in a rage when the heroes accidentally stumble into the heart of their nest, or out of a sense of vengeance for one of their own? This dose of realism would have the added benefit of upping the "we're being hunted" sense of the film, only adding to the terror.
Another "not enough" is the intriguing exploration of Sarah's psychosis. We're warned during the hike to the cave mouth that paranoia, dementia, hallucination, all of these are possible in a cave, but there're far too many actual, physical monsters and not enough imagined ones, especially from Sarah's point of view. Everything from her hallucination after losing her daughter and husband to unidentified pills beside her nightstand to the sound of a young girl's laughter in the caves suggest that she is schizophrenic; this could've been a huge source of tension and nightmarish imagery for the film, but it's only briefly alluded to. We as the audience are never forced to question what is real and what is imagined, which can be a horrific experience all by itself. Also, the movie suggests that Sarah was a fine, normal woman until the car accident. People get depressed when they lose loved ones, they begin having nightmares, but stressful situations and senses of loss don't cause schizophrenia or hallucinations. At worst, they might trigger episodes in someone already prone to such mental illness. I'd happily have traded the silly "perfectly evolved predators" speech in the cave for a throwaway conversation alluding to Sarah's mental issues during the opening rafting sequence, perhaps even hinting that such issues were what drove her husband into one of her friend's arms.
But I'll forgive Marshall for the faults above, because the basics of a fine thriller with compelling characters, great imagery, and fantastic pacing were all there to outweigh them. The movie sticks with you, and even more than it makes you want to stay away from caves, it makes you question how much you can trust those around you. In short, it gets inside your head.