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'The Descent' ~ new film from the director of 'Dog Soldiers'

So it's about a group of women crawling through a cave?

Paging Doctor Freud. Could Doctor Freud please pick up the white courtesy phone?
 
Review

Screening Review from AICN:
Hello, I just got back from an advance preview screening of Neil Marshall's new horror film 'The Descent'. his last film 'Dog Soldiers' was (in my mind) a crazy great fresh kick in the teeth, but if this new film kicked anything it was my bollocks, and it kicked them so far up into my body I could do a great Brando Godfather impression.

The screening wasn't all that far in advance (the film opens wide in the UK on Friday), but it was shown at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh by the crew from the Dead By Dawn horror film festival. The film was apparently meant to be shown in the festival back in April but Marshall didn't have it ready by then so he only showed a trailer. The director of the festival introduced the film telling us Marshall couldn't make the screening as he was knocking back warm beers down south in London. Oh well...

'The Descent' is a caving film, with 6 women going underground. One of them lost her husband and daughter a year earlier, as witnessed by two of the others (and us - ouch). This trip is a chance for our heroine to show strength and solidarity. We are introduced to the other women, including two sisters, and a lovely Irish girl with a penchant for extreme sports (who takes the piss out of caving a fair bit until things turn bad).

After a leisurely introduction to the caves our ladies get stuck, with no option but to continue into the darkness. I was lucky enough to know bugger-all about the film going into it, so I was right alongside the cavers, venturing into the unknown, and all the better for it. Fairly soon the film introduces the 'crawlers' (well they're never named, but credited as crawlers in the credits). We don't see too much of them straight away. This is A Good Thing, not because of cheap creature design, but Less Is More as we all know.

I don't want to spoil the film's plot from now on. This is the premise, and the film is a tightly paced horror film that relies on its great action sequences and tense set-ups. We're not watching an epic film here, though the first glimpse of a crawler is surprisingly like our first glimpse of Gollum in Peter Jackson's epic.

'The Descent' managed to keep me feeling physically tense for pretty much most of its running time, something I haven't felt since watching Blair Witch for the first time and being totally suckered into the hype (well I was younger then). There's plenty (and I do mean PLENTY) of BANG! horror jump-scares, but even though you can see a lot of them coming from a mile away, every single one worked a treat on me! I love getting into a horror film and letting yourself get scared, and I was able to do so very easily in this film.

But it's not all jump-scares. There are so many tense build-ups in the film, and not all of them lead to a jump-scare. Marshall clearly knows his shit with horror films, and has great fun teasing the audience. There's a fantastic little sequence where we see a narrow pathway that does a u-turn on itself. We only see one side of the path at a time. The two sisters are creeping along, the older one moving first. The camera follows her to peek around the corner to check the coast is clear, then back as she tells her sister that it is. Then still in the same shot we follow the younger sister round the corner as she moves onward, then back again to the older sister as she prepares to follow, and finally round again as she joins her younger sister. Each time the camera moves along the black face of rock between the two areas I was covering my face in my hands, totally convinced that This would be the next big jump-scare, only to be denied by Marshall, and then made even more tense as I awaited the next possible reveal. So much fun!

There are simply loads of moments like this, where the camera moves slowly but surely around a dark cave, and you just KNOW that something is lurking in the black, ready to scare the crap out of you. One of the women has a video camera, with a handy night-vision function. This comes in very useful for some not-very-original but very-well-executed "what's over there in the dark?" shots.

Another aspect of the film that I loved was how harsh it is. I think every great horror film should have at least one truly harsh moment; one that is just so unfair on the character onscreen (and thereby the audience). We get our first one when the crawlers make their first attack, and one of the girls (Juno) is getting severely amped up and just a little bit psycho. She made at least half the audience tonight cry out at the unfairness of it all! Later our heroine (the widow Sarah) gets properly stuck into a fight with a crawler or two in a big pool of bloody water. This fight sequence is just f***ing great, and it looks absolutely beautiful. Again, nothing startlingly original about characters fighting each other covered in blood, but the deep red of the gore captured onscreen just highlights the gritty harshness of the fight sequence.

Oh yes, the blood. 'The Descent' has some top quality gore and blood. Sean Pertwee's struggle with a little pooch in 'Dog Soldiers' should prepare you for what's to come in this flick. There's nothing too showy about it; no geysers of blood spraying everyone in sight for example; but what you see is violent, red, messy and perfectly suited to the tone of the film. One of the girls' breaks a leg, which pleasingly turned half the audience's faces away.

SPOILER IN THIS PARAGRAPH (well a small one)
You may notice that I've only named one of the women so far. Well the individual characters are not the film's strongpoint. There are 6 women who go down into the caves, and two of them I could care less for. There's Sarah, our heroine the widow, her mate Beth from home (a thankless role, but gets the audience's sympathy for being so nice), Juno who seems to have a lot to prove (and was having an affiar with Sarah's husband - ooh, juicy!), the Irish girl whose name I've already forgotten, but she's a fun character with quite a few jokes in her, and the two sisters, who I suspect were there as Trek-style Red Sweaters. The main 4 are competent in their roles, but it's really Sarah and Juno who stand out.

SPOILER OVER
I don't want to tell too much, but it's ok to let you know that Sarah does go f***ing mental. She transforms into a f***ing terminator, kicking serious f***ing ass and thoroughly justifying the amount of swearing in this paragraph. A lot of movies have the lead "go terminator" without rhyme nor reason, but Sarah's progression is believable and fits the film perfectly.

Neil Marshall has crafted an extremely solid horror film in 'The Descent'. It doesn't feature anything particularly original, but it's not a rip-off or anything. It feels very tight, very well made by a bunch of people who clearly know horror. They give you just the right amount of moments to breath and let out a little wry laugh, before coaxing you back into an uncomfortably tense sequence. Speaking of which, this film has the best shot claustrophobia sequence I've ever seen on film, as one of the women gets stuck crawling through a tight tunnel early on in the film. Very uncomfortable to watch.

The showing was apparently supposed to be held in a room with a larger screen, but something broke down, and rather than show it on a large screen in mono, they showed it to us on a smaller screen with full surround sound, and I am very thankful for that! The sound design in this film deserves a special mention, for capturing the tension. Nothing is rammed down your throat, but I was constantly feeling uneasy at the sounds coming from all around, especially when the crawlers make their distinctive noises. Again, nothing too wowing, but noticably of a high quality, and always put to good use. I liked the score too, with its steadily building crescendos, getting increasingly atonal, messed up and freaky.

Ah, I nearly forgot. The crawlers. Well, this wasn't a big budget film, but the crawlers are just cool creatures. They obviously had a lot of thought put into them, and as such they make sense in the setting of the film. They don't have a stand-out feature that screams cool (like the reapers' maws in Blade II for example), but they're creepy enough to help make the action and tension sequences more effective. They did however remind me alot of another recent British horror film Creep (which I saw last night - meh).

I really liked this film (as if you couldn't tell). It's a refreshingly harsh film that pulls no punches, and gives an audience who knows their horror plenty to enjoy. Thanks to the Filmhouse and Dead By Dawn for showing it to us early!

Thanks Harry, I really do reccommend this film to you! It's satisfying to know there are people like Neil Marshall out there who get horror and can put out refreshingly well made films that reconfirm your belief in the genre, especially when Resident Evil 3, Scary Movie 4, and whatever bollocksed-up American remakes of generic Asian horror films featuring ghosts of little girls with long black hair are on the horizon. Also nice to know it's all British (cast, crew, locations and money), when not much gets the chance to get made here.
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Emperor said:
[edit: And the prize for Least Informative trailer goes to.......]
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I managed to pause the video on the Green-lit screaming angry thing and he looked a bit poor. Like an orc-reject from LoTR.

Hoping it's not the finished article.
 
I have seen an old cheap budget version of this film called GRIM, and it was.

Gunther91.
 
Seems a bit cheap to give it 3 stars but it is actually a good review:

The Descent

*** Cert 18

Peter Bradshaw
Friday July 8, 2005
The Guardian

All claustrophobics had better get notes from their mums saying that they don't have to see this. The Descent is a scary and lairy little British horror film about six women climbers who find something very nasty in a cave. It's got its silly moments, and there are sometimes more plot-holes than pot-holes, but writer-director Neil Marshall carries it off with a punky flair and keeps the yeecch factor cranked up high. There's also an old-fashioned false ending to keep us off balance right up to the final credits.

As the feisty explorers lower into the dank depths, it becomes clear that two of them have serious issues with each other, an enmity which festers in tandem with the grisly horror hidden in the cave itself. I was cringing into my clothes at scenes of women having to shuffle through tiny tunnels with about a millimetre's space all around. It's a bit like The Great Escape, only without the Escape. These moments are more disturbing, actually, than the ghastly beasts who start popping out of the stonework later on: blind humanoid mutants who have found an evolutionary existence in the pitch black, but hunt for food up on the surface. (Where the whole blindness thing presumably puts them at a bit of a Darwinian disadvantage.)

Do women in peril together act differently from the macho guys in Deliverance or the unisex indie videographers of Blair Witch? Well, they're not obviously at each other's throats, yet neither is sisterhood precisely the keynote. The Descent becomes most interesting when we focus on the self-appointed leader, Juno (Natalie Mendoza) who has ambiguous motives for persuading the troubled Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) to come along for the subterranean nightmare. It makes for a nastily violent thrill-ride heading straight down.
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www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/st ... 04,00.html
 
When I went to see Land of the Dead, they showed the trailer for The Cave, which looks identical to this movie except for 2 things: it's a coed spelunking party and the monsters look like giant bats.
 
Wonder if this film will gain ghoulish/fortean/conspiratorial legendary status for its connection to the 7/7 London bombings?

(for those who haven't heard it, there was an advertising poster for "The Descent" on the no 30 bus (which one of my best friends' father died on :( ), the film title part of which was torn off by the explosion, leaving only a newspaper reviewer's quote, which said "Outright terror, bold and brilliant"... this, i think, became a UK paper headline about the bombings... :eek: )
 
I thought I'd posted in this thread - oh well..

I went with my wife and some friends to see this when it was in it's cinema run, and thought it was truly awful.

I'm sure I had posted up a full review/diatribe on it, but its not here :(
 
lennynero~ said:
When I went to see Land of the Dead, they showed the trailer for The Cave, which looks identical to this movie except for 2 things: it's a coed spelunking party and the monsters look like giant bats.
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As there isn't a specific The Cave thread we might as well mix and match and confuse folk in the process.

IMDB:
www.imdb.com/title/tt0402901/

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DVD out this month:

The Cave (R2) in November

Entertainment In Video have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of The Cave for 28th November 2005 priced at £19.99. A team of scientists and divers set out to chart an underground river a mile beneath the Carpathian mountains. It's a dangerous job, all the more so since the caves are inhabited by some very unpleasant creatures. The Cave is a new horror B-movie from the producers of Anaconda.

Features include:

* 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
* English DD5.1 Surround
* English DD2.0 Stereo
* English subtitles
* Into the Cave 'Making of' (18:42mins)
* Designing Evolution: Tatopoulos Studios - Special Effects featurette (10:32mins)
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www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=59249

www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000B ... ntmagaz-21

Synopsis

In the ruins of a 13th Century Abbey, a group of scientists discover a series of underground caves. A group of divers are called in to investigate the caves but run into the unimaginable... a species not encountered before.

DVD Description

Deep in the Romanian forest, a team of scientists stumbles upon the ruins of a 13th Century Abbey. On further inspection, they make a startling discovery – the Abbey is built over the entrance to a giant underground cave system, so they hire a group of American cave-explorers to help them investigate its depths. JACK (Cole Hauser) and his brother TYLER (Eddie Cibrian) are thrill-seeking professional cave explorers who run a team of the top divers in the world. They arrive in Romania with all the latest equipment, including a new type of scuba tank allowing a diver to remain submerged for up to 24 hours. The Crack units, which also includes CHARLIE (Piper Perabo) and BUCHANAN (Morris Chestnut), immediately begins their exploration. But what they find deep inside the cave is not just a new eco-system, but an entirely new species altogether…..
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R1 out in Januaryt:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BUN ... enantmc-20
 
The Descent.

Saw it last night, plot is a bit thin but there are plenty of 'AARGH!' moments in it.

Ending sucks.

6/10 :?
 
I've had the distinct pleasure of seeing both The Descent and The Cave, and I have to say the former is the better of the 2. Marshall takes a worn out premise and turns it into a visceral horror experience, never skimping on the gore, while the latter is a by-the-numbers, PG13, Hollywood attempt at horror. Although I did like the underwater cave diving sequences in the latter film.
 
The underground creatures in Descent looked very like the underground creature in the similarly formulaic Creep. The film had a few effective 'jumps' in it, but you could usually spot them coming a mile off. Also, I thought it was badly paced. The creatures weren't even sighted till halfway through the film, then suddenly they were everywhere. A few ambivalent glimpses of them earlier on might have helped introduce some tension into the rather tedious first half.

Good ending, though.
 
Another cave-related one but it seems they decided to go with a young good looking cast (and possibly forget the story!!):

January 13: More underground horror in DARK REACHES

Variety reports that Cherry Road Films and Double Edge Entertainment, following in the footsteps of last year’s THE CAVE and this summer’s Lionsgate release THE DESCENT, are teaming produce the subterranean chiller DARK REACHES. Jessica (WICKER PARK) Pare (pictured) and THE OC’s Johnny Lewis are in discussions to star as two of a group of teenagers who come across a spooky cave, decide to explore and get trapped inside, whereupon they’re attacked by “unspeakable horrors” whose details have yet to be revealed. Mark Marabate scripted, and no director or distributor have been announced yet—though Cherry Road, which is also behind Richard Kelly’s recently wrapped genre-blender SOUTHLAND TALES, has an overall development deal with Warner Independent Pictures. Filming on DARK REACHES will begin this spring in Taiwan. —Michael Gingold
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www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5395
 
Watched this the other week - an excellent film. I could imagine that might have had people crapping themselves in the cinemas.

Which brings me to its US release - its on the next Fangoria cover and they saw it is out in August:

www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=6025

The delay is awfully odd but I'd definitely recommend people catch it in the cinema (or have I misunderstood and its the US DVD release?).
 
graylien said:
The underground creatures in Descent looked very like the underground creature in the similarly formulaic Creep. The film had a few effective 'jumps' in it, but you could usually spot them coming a mile off. Also, I thought it was badly paced. The creatures weren't even sighted till halfway through the film, then suddenly they were everywhere. A few ambivalent glimpses of them earlier on might have helped introduce some tension into the rather tedious first half.

Good ending, though.
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You do see one near the beginning of the film (when they first enter the cave), but it's blink-and-you'll-miss-it (I only noticed it on the second viewing). The ending is wonderful and horrible. It just makes you feel...cheated. Just like the girl, I suppose.
 
Just saw it, and I thought it was really cool. The tention worked for me, the effects, and the acting.

The only thing I didn't get was a certain character death at the end.

Are SPOILERS still neccesary for an older film?

>>>

Okay, I thought Juno shouldn't have gotten killed. Sarah shouldn't have been able to talk to the friend who was very accidently killed by Juno by a blow to the throat (and how was she talking with a throat full of blood?), nor should she have killed Juno for just having an ffair with her dead husband. I understand she had snapped, but I don't think that Juno should have been offed. And it has nothing to do with her deep brown eyes, either. Honest. :lol:

I didn't see many of the hidden cave critters, but I need to see this one again and double check to see if I missed a few.

And the film ended with Sarah getting in the car, driving away, and then seeing the ghost of Juno in the car. The end. How did it end over in the UK?
 
More SPOILERS:

MrRING said:
And the film ended with Sarah getting in the car, driving away, and then seeing the ghost of Juno in the car. The end. How did it end over in the UK?
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The UK version ends with Sarah's escape turning out to be fantasy, and she is still caught underground with the nasties surrounding her, getting closer in the dark. The end.
 
That's how the unrated director's cut DVD ends, as well. Felt like they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too.

Its style of 8 cuts per second during the action sequences really irritated me. I'd like to actually SEE what's going on during a scene, please.

Still, I have to give it kudos for being a very claustrophobic and unsettling viewing experience. Really, what more can you ask for in a horror movie?
 
I may be bias as a friend of mine edited the film but I quite enjoyed it. The real horror wasn't the flesh eating monster or the women tunring on each oher...the real horror was the crawling around the caves.

Never understood that "sport".

Billions of years of evolution crawling from the caves only to get the point where you can put a light on your head and crawl back in.
Natural selection IMO
 
I really enjoyed it actually, and felt it was quite refreshing. Can't be bothered with The Cave, as it justs looks like a standard Hollywood horror flick that will probably just be a bit boring.
 
PlagueRider said:
Can't be bothered with The Cave, as it justs looks like a standard Hollywood horror flick that will probably just be a bit boring.
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It was. And then some.
 
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