Review of The Descent

By Alex Conde

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

I wasn’t too fond of the first part of the movie, but I loved the second part.

            In the genre of horror, which has been lacking in good stories recently, this movie is a surprising star.  While the beginning of this movie is the slowest of any horror movie I can recall, the wait is well worth it.  Don’t get lulled into ignoring the small details in the start of the story, as some of them will reappear later in the story.

            This movie really hits its stride when the friends descend into the cave.  Even before monsters arrive, the cinematography has you on the edge of your seat.  If you’re the least bit claustrophobic, this movie will have you on the edge of your seat.  In a great build of tension, a minor collapse in the tunnels has the friends trapped and angry at each other even before the monsters arrive.  In some ways, the arrival of the monsters weren’t even needed to make the movie a good horror.  In a great twist on filming, the characters bring a night vision camera down into the tunnels with them, which is used as an alternate view when the lights go out.  The night vision view keeps the movie realistic and tense, while proving that there are scarier things than Paris Hilton to see in night vision.

            Now, if you’re the type of person who loves surprises, don’t read any further because this will spoil one for you, but if you don’t mind a PLOT SPOILER read on.

            While the comparisons are fairly obvious between Gollum from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and these cave monsters in The Descent, I find the introduction to the monsters to be somewhat lacking.  The fact that the monster takes a pose that was actually used in promotional material for the Lord of the Rings makes the characters seem somewhat more comical, like Gollum was, rather than a genuine threat.

            Also worth noting is the ending of the movie.  I noticed that it seemed somewhat disjointed, where Sarah sees the “ghost” of Juno, the friend whom she had left to die and then the movie ends.  I saw no reason to include that scene, but in reading material online, I discovered that there was a more complete ending in the UK version of the movie.  In the UK, the Sarah sees the ghost of Juno and then wakes up, still in the cave with the monsters.  This ending was deemed as too dark for North American audiences, so they edited it to create a less dark ending, but unfortunately the new ending didn’t make much sense (at least to me).