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The Descent
Scary, clever and entertaining - The Descent manages to avoid being any of these things. Trite, slight and downright shite - now that's more like it.
The Descent is the lowest form of horror film. You would have thought it completely impossible to make an unscary movie about potholing - pretty scary even when it goes well, let alone with predators involved - but they've managed it. If you enjoyed having that annoying twat poke you in the ribs at school to make you jump then you might find some entertainment here, but for the rest of us, this is one extreme adventure we can all do without. I enjoyed this film: I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: It's pretty gory and the cast is all female - should have been a 15 certificate though. To enjoy this film you should be: a die-hard horror nut.
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The Descent .... The title says it all, the film descends past rock bottom very quickly, starts with a sequence that could be used as a road safety film, goes onto show how NOT to cave and ends up being a laughable gore fest between hysterical women and oversized Golems .... It's complete rubbish and should be avoided at all costs. Watching Bagpuss on a rainy day is more horrific!
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It all starts promisingly enough - we're introduced to the five foxy spelunkers, a little vague background is provided
and we set off down the big black hole. But the moment the sudden loud noise happens to make the audience jump, we
already know we're in the hands of a novice. Oh dear, oh god, please let them all die quickly so I can go home.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - the sudden loud noise does NOT BELONG in a scary movie. If you made a 110dB
bang in the middle of Coronation Street it would make us jump, it's a natural reflex and has exactly nothing to do with
the amount of suspense created or the scariness of the scene. There's only one
reason to put sudden loud jumps into your scary movie, and that's LAZINESS. Your movie's not scary enough so let's make
the audience jump a few times so they don't fall asleep. It makes me want to find Mr Marshall the director
and slap him repeatedly
with a haddock until he promises never to do it again. And then slap him again just to make sure.
So the direction's bad then - what else? Well, the performances from the five stars are pretty good, even given their
absurd scenario and appallingly unbelievable screenplay. There are a few times where tension is generated by the actors'
performances rather than the nasty monsters and they do work very well. Without giving too much away, there is a typical
potholer-panic scene early on that is very effective purely because of the emotion delivered by the players. There are
also two particular plot twists that were refreshingly different and well acted, but that's not nearly enough. Once the
golems appear, the actors are up against an impenetrable bastion of bollocks - the trolls can easily navigate their
way through caverns in total darkness (using sound, apparently) and can hunt effectively above ground despite being
blind, but they can't hear the girls chatting to one another
two feet away and they can't detect them at all unless they do jumping jacks right under their noses. They can, however,
sneak up on the girls any time they want, naturally to the accompaniment of a sudden loud noise and a new fatwa on
the director. The sound, as well - oh lordy. Just walk into a cave and say something, Mr Sound Man, I think you'll be
surprised how remarkably unlike a studio it sounds. And the lighting. Shining a spotlight in someone's face
isn't going to convince us. It's supposed to be two miles underground, so when the girls lose their lights, IT SHOULD GO DARK!
Now here's the weird thing - it's getting good reviews from both critics and viewers! I am at a total loss to explain
why this is. The only possibility I can think of is that British viewers so badly want British films to be good that they
see quality where there isn't any. This is a British film, and the director Neil Marshall was previously responsible for
Dog Soldiers, which I quite liked for its tongue-in-cheek side. The Descent has no such depth and is far inferior to
Dog Soldiers in pretty much every respect. Don't listen to the hoi polloi, you know I'd never lie to you.
