The Descent - Review

Rating: B-

Without exaggeration, my friend never has more than $10 on him whenever we go out. Why is that? Well, he’s a claustrophobic. It’s not very expensive to get around the city, unless of course you have an irrational fear of confined spaces. Getting on a subway is simply not an option, so if he’s got to be somewhere, it’s cab rides all the way. So, I suggested to him, “you should see The Descent, dude.” There was no getting him in a cab to see a movie about being trapped in a cave. Apparently, it would be just too frightening for him, but isn’t that what we look for in a good horror film? Aren’t those the guidelines—the purpose of them? To scare us? To exploit our deepest fears?

To pretend we don’t have a little claustrophobia inside all of us would be irrational. The Descent creeps around in search of that vulnerable space. It spots the fertile patch in your brain, and plants its infectious and crippling seed. It gets you lost in a dark and unmapped cave. You crawl through tunnels that just fit your body, and all of a sudden you get trapped. Time is limited, light is running low, and an exit, well, an exit might not even exist. You can’t tell me claustrophobia doesn’t at least poke at you in this situation.

The Descent sees six thrill-seeking women in this situation, but you quickly become the seventh friend who also has to endure the wicked eeriness of the cave and the hungry creatures that haunt it. In your theater seat, your teeth grind and you shield your face from terrifying scenes of realistic catastrophe, but all the while a great deal of The Descent’s nightmarish maneuvering is cheap and typical of the genre. The irony and foreshadows are painfully obvious and come off as Friday The 13thtriteness.

What panics you most is the sense of confinement that the characters essentially brought on themselves, and their inability to seek help or consult a guide. Though, as soon as The Descent explores catastrophe that is far from realistic, the film begins to suffer. The horror remains, but becomes artificial and loses its ability to terrorize the audience after the credits roll; had it never transformed into a monster movie—if these savage beasts were merely the hallucinatory affects of a cavernous episode—than I think we could have walked away stalked by the thought of caves forever. We get a nice taste of it, but as we hike through the film’s second half, we are only frightened by sudden visual bolts. We end up startled by something along the lines of an unsuspecting grab of the shoulder. You get that hearty jolt of fright but the dose dissolves soon after the film ends.

The Descent’s characters aren’t deeply explored, especially by the actresses who leave their characters paper-thin, besides the main character, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), who doesn’t take up enough camera-time. While each woman is critical to the plot, Sarah is the only character that you really feel for, but that’s all that’s necessary for the film. Her tragic history makes this more recent tragedy even worse for her and more interesting for us to watch. She is the most volatile character in the film, and at any moment she could lose her cool and put herself and everyone there along with her in fatal jeopardy. The others are there to move the story forward –the ones there to overestimate their capabilities so much so that they make the adventure an unwelcome dip into toxic waters, instead of the intended fun adrenalin rush. Unfortunately because of these stiff character roles, who survives and who doesn’t is too predictable, but the scares along the way kind of make up for it.

Examining a horror movie is a difficult assignment. The genre is ruled almost exclusively by craftsmanship that is less than perfect. It escapes that rule every so often (more so in the past with movies like Psycho and The Exorcist), but you’d be foolish to go into the theater expecting to see a horror flick destined to be a classic. Because I set my expectations low, I’m okay with just the roller-coaster-effect. In fact, I’ve recommended The Descent to some friends, but most of them know better than to anticipate Oscar-status. Get a little scared or a little disturbed. Eat some popcorn, sit back, and get claustrophobic.

Trailer