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The British horror-thriller film “The Descent” does an excellent job at recalling grueling, heart racing movies like ‘Deliverance,’ ‘Jaws,’ ‘Alien’ and ‘Dead Calm,’ and for good reason. Finaly, a grim movie which focuses on something other than just blood and entrails. This movie is chaos incarnate. Instead of the fuzzy, empty feeling you are left with after most horror movies, you feel exhilarated and energized.
Invoices over closing and horror mockumentaries have focused on gore and torture. While this is certainly a valid form of horror, it takes away from true primal fear, which is untouched in “The Descent.” The plunge is a reference to a cave-diving adventure pursued by six women. However, it is also a breathless tumble into nightmarish chaos.
“The Descent” definitely doesn’t skimp on visceral encounters. Bodies undergo violent pulls and pushes, all while enduring relentless battering and stretching beyond their limits. The slender passageways, along with the spacious hollows, occasionally brought to life by the light of pinkish-red flares, turn the place into a fantastic-looking inner realm, both physical and mental. These women try to exceed the boundaries of muscles, bones, friendships, and the very fundamental idea of self-being.
Had I been watching an American movie (Which “The Descent” thankfully isn’t), these women would have been marked with one “problem” each of them would work through a set of distinguishing characteristics. I’m thankful to “The Descent” for not wasting time on the prologue and obligatory schematic elements. Character development is useless in places like these. So “The Descent”, I’m glad, chooses to give no F’s – all into the zero dimension.
Indeed, there is a protagonist, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and she is an individual who has recently dealt with trauma and needs to experience rebirth in order to integrate back into the world. Beth (Alex Reid) is Sarah’s caring friend. Juno (Natalie Mendoza, who channels a tough girl Michelle Rodriguez) is also in the group, but she is the risk-taking, unreliable member who always gets into trouble and the one who dares to lead the expedition to the depths of Appalachia. (Cue the “Dueling Banjos” theme here). There is also a mother and daughter duo together with a girl’s friend who is a punkish cusp lover who prefers phallic base jumping as opposed to yonic cave diving. And that about rounds up the group.
What works in the favor of the film is the underground dark, claustrophobic world in which the women soon realize the only way out is through. Writer-director Neil Marshall (2002’s “Dog Soldiers”) uses repeated imagery of penetration (not just sexual, but deadly) above and below ground, seeing through a bullet-riddled road sign or blasting stalagmites and stalactites in ways that stress their some which can be used for impalement.
Both he and cinematographer Sam McCurdy possess a skill in dealing with dark lighting as well. It can be constricting, such as when most of the screen is black with only a narrow stone cave in view, or it can be an empty space, a void waiting to be occupied by real or imagined threats. These perfectly crafted shots capture the essence of suspense and fear.
Marshall’s core audience seems to have been well catered to. He seems to have analyzed a great deal of the films that his specific target audience shudders to think of, like the very well-known thrillers from the ‘70s, and he does not hesitate to quote them astonishingly without making you feel removed from his film. Finding these visual quotes where the shots are inserted, and then watching how the Descent works its magic upon them is one of the most interesting parts of it. In addition to the films already mentioned, they make use of references to “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” “Carrie,” “2001 A Space Odyssey,” The Third Man, The Fourth Man, Don’t Look Now, The Blair Witch Project, Vertigo, and even Apocalypse Now… and many, many others.
“Plays of great classical music are often accompanied by ballet performances. In ‘The Descent’ the audience is challenged to dream or imagine what exactly Goya’s Black Paintings, Fuseli’s The Nightmare, gothic gargoyles and Dore’s engravings for Dante’s Inferno look like. The images help drive The Descent. It sculpts a masterpiece. It is driven by classic nightmares or hallucinations. People love being scared and worried, works wonders. The movie is not pretending to be something it is not.”
“To pick parts from other works is both dangerous and amazing in the same manner. One false move and you can mess up the entire picture or even a masterpiece, but if done correctly you wow the audience. The downside of doing this is everyone is bound to have an opinion on the film before watching it, but that’s the tricky part. To avoid interruption from the crowd, it is better to release films in out-of-the-way places.”
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