Sometimes the most legendary of horror movies play on our most primal fears. These fears include our unfamiliarity with water in Jaws, the betrayal of our own body in The Fly, or simply a fear of predators in good slasher flicks.  These fears essentially tie into our desire to survive and can often be used to great effect if utilized correctly in a horror film.  Claustrophobia and a fear of darkness fit into this category and can be immediately debilitating to some; so, for those affected by this, I say tread with caution when watching The Descent.

 The Descent comes to us from the great land of England and is helmed by director Neil Marshall.  Marshall has gained a very faithful cult following thanks to his debut film Dog Soldiers.  An incredibly fun horror movie with a bunch of army Scotsmen fighting werewolves.  This movie sports lots of cursing, a brief spat of boxing with a werewolf, and the best upright werewolf design I’ve ever seen.  To say that Marshall has grown as a filmmaker since making Dog Soldiers would be an understatement.  To put it briefly, The Descent is simply about a group of female friends going on a caving trip.  Well, like in any good horror movie, all hell breaks loose, they get stuck in a cave, and…uh-oh…there’s “something” down there.

 To put it bluntly, this is a lean, mean horror movie.  Any and all humor is saved for the first act and the mood from then on out is bleak at best and nihilistic at worst.  The pacing for this movie is deliberate, but not remotely slow.  The movie moves like a 3-act play:  the first act being the gathering of the friends, the second act being the caving, and the third act…well…it gets pretty heinous.  Through the effective casting and the skilled, tense direction of the first two acts, I wasn’t even aware that I had to wait 50 minutes for the truly horrible acts to take place.  Speaking of the casting, the cast is all-around superb.  In a movie that’s essentially about survival, there’s a lot of opening for melodramatic rants and overacting, a la Saw.  Thankfully the director reigns in the cast and keeps the acting as natural as possible; this is bolstered by the naturalistic writing..

 Now on to the factor that decides great horror movies, the horror.  Like I’ve said earlier, Marshall has grown leaps and bounds above his earlier work by reaching a greater affluence in concise editing, oppressive lighting(the lack thereof), and a greater sense of frame composition.  The moments of tension and horror themselves are off the charts.  I’m not even a terribly claustrophobic person, but the moments where the women are caving, I couldn’t help but get extremely uneasy watching it.  Although, once Marshall unleashes the creatures upon the movie, it starts to really get bonkers.  Beforehand, the camerawork was used sparingly and efficiently, but once the horror is unleashed, then the camera goes handheld to create a sense of chaos without making the movie nauseous to watch.  Now, being a big horror fan myself, it’s not terribly hard to tell when a jump-scare is coming.  An astute viewer can see the filmmaker telegraphing the scare: by the framing of the camera, the movement away from the character, and the drop in ambience.  Although, there some jump-scares that are telegraphed, I was still caught off-guard by a couple and even the ones I saw coming still made me jump.  Thankfully all the jump-scares are used sparingly and appropriately to create tension; thankfully, the only “cat in the closet” jump is near the beginning.  Also the gorehounds will certainly not be disappointed, because Marshall shows very little restraint and seems to have something against the human throat and eyeballs.

 There are only a couple black marks that I give this movie.  The first is the creature design.  Normally I wouldn’t be so hard on design with a movie, but creature design often makes or breaks a horror movie(think Alien or Predator).  While the creature design is not even remotely bad, in fact it is quite effective and appropriate, it is not entirely original.  The creature design seems to borrow heavily from the “Reaper” design in Blade 2, whether intentionally or not, and its hard to give credit where credit is due in this case.  The pasty white skin, bald head, and waxy skin are a dead giveaway, but thankfully these hellions do not know kung-fu…thankfully.  Although, this black mark is easily smudged by the fact that the design is still very effective and very creepy.  The other black mark is that a character‘s motives behind a certain scene, near the end, seem to come out of nowhere.  While the motive is thematically sound, Marshall doesn’t quite prepare the viewer for the moment by efficiently showing the character’s mental progression.

 Overrall, despite the negative aspects of it, the movie is an extremely effective horror movie.  It does everything a great horror movie needs to do in order to be effective.  It’s tense, terrifying, and shows great promise for a filmmaker that has no intention of leaving the horror genre(much to my relief).  I was able to purchase this dvd through an English seller on Ebay, so if some of you are interested, then I suggest snagging it now(beware, the dvd is region 2).  If you don’t feel like ponying up the cash, then you can wait until August when Lions Gate will be giving The Descent a wide release.  So, I emphatically encourage everyone that reads this review to check this movie out and be sure to check out the trailer at…
http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/thedescent/

Overall Grade: A-
- Jacob