Neil Marshall pulls out the stops and gives us one of the best UK horror movies in such a long time. This is a no holds barred bloodied fright fest with great characters, claustrophobic settings, bone shattering action and more than a few knee jerk moments. This is a far cry from his previous cult hit, ‘Dog Soldiers’ , gone is the warm witty army banter, this is simply a cold and brutal tale of survival.
Originally entitled ‘The Dark’ , but it was eventually changed due to another movie being released under that title by a director who also previously made a werewolf flick.
Starting off with a tragic accident, Sarah (the excellent Shauna Macdonald) tries to piece together what she can of her life. A year later and with her best friend in tow, Beth (Alex Reid), they head for the Appalachian mountains (or Scotland doubling in for them) to meet old friend Juno (Natalie Jackson Mendoza) for some outdoors fun. Here, they meet the remainder of the group, sisters Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) and Sam (MyAnna Buring), and base-jumping wild card Holly (Nora-Jane Noone).
We just get our breaths back, slowly getting to know the girls and their characters, before they head off down into the darkness the following morning. The group are here for a caving experience and not before long the blood will start to flow.
Marshall gives us a likable group of girls and pits them into the dark depths underground, isolated and confused in an alien terrain, and then throws in some nasty cave dwellers with a taste for raw flesh. Like a cross between ‘Deliverance’ and ‘Raw Meat’ , he uses a simple setting to twist our fears, the camerawork, score and set design work their way under or skin to make it crawl with the foreboding claustrophobia, the screen seeming so small with the rocks and the blackness closing in. At times we are restricted to just a single fragile beam, or at others, we have green, red and blue hues, speckled with shadows, giving an almost surrealistic feel to this underground world. A nice touch too, is that nearing the end of the movie, each character seems to have their own colour scheme.
The acting is top notch, with a standout performance from Macdonald, who goes from fragile victim to bloodied fighting queen. Mendoza too shines as the over-bearing beautiful Juno. But credit should be given to the cast on the whole for giving such believable performances, from mothering Rebecca to straight laced Dr. Sam, from supportive Beth to Juno protégé Holly, taking us from their easy going drunken fun and frolics to grim wide eyed survivalists. Their journey is sharp and shocking, from the cave-in that closes off their means of exit and the discovery that they are not where they should be or even alone, they have to go further forward into the abyss with Marshall cranking up the suspense to breaking point.
The movie does not scrimp on the bloodshed either, although brutal it never feels gratuitous, but for those of a squeamish disposition you may be closing your eyes on a few occasions. Marshall signals his intent right from the very start, in the first few minutes when he manipulates the audience with the shocking tragic car accident, we know that from now on no one is safe.
To go into the plot in any more detail would actually spoil some of the fun in the watching, so switch off the lights, turn up the volume and get prepared for a scary roller coaster. Marshall you are the boss !
Also on disc one we have two audio commentaries, the first being very amusing and filled with comments of sweaty cleavages to deep and damp cracks, Marshall and the girls give a fun commentary and he also pips in humorously that he was told he was making a horror porn movie, as it mainly contained little white guys chasing girls down those dark wet tunnels. There are some nice points of trivia too, with Marshall stating his filmic nods including ‘Alien’ , ‘Deliverance’ (Juno even has the same colour of wet suit as Burt Reynolds did for his backwoods nightmare), ‘Silence of the Lambs’ , ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Carrie’ amongst others. In the second, Marshall is joined by his crew, including John Harrison who plays a pivotal role with the editing, this proves amusing again but gets pipped by the girlie banter of the first, but they do discuss on what ways the movie can be viewed… but I will say no more…
Sadly, disc two, which is crammed full of extras, was not available for review. For full content details please refer to our database .
'The Descent' is available for pre-order via AmazonUK , and as of yet no US release date has been given.
For those in the UK, check out the competitions page where you can win this great 2 disc DVD !
You can read more about the DVD in our database .
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