The Descent

For the past half year, or perhaps longer, I’ve been caught in the throes of what we’ll go ahead and call a download freakout.  Everything ever created suddenly available through any number of websites, from that missing bonus scene in Sodomania 38 where the great Tiffany Mynx sexually tortures her co-star with a feather duster to the point where the scene had to be removed to John Cleese performing a mesmerizing reading of The Inferno.  Given the two, I prefer a coked-out Mynx fucking up a scene and needing to be dragged off of her victim to anybody even talking about The Inferno, but Cleese brings a certain power to the reading.
Complete with breathless chanting, which, when read that way, gives you an almost Lovecraftian sensation.
Stop!  Stop!  You don’t know what you’re doing!  Don’t read another – Oh my god…

Amidst the entertainment avalanche downloaded each day, I snagged The Descent. I didn’t know what it was except that it was a horror flick and, every once in a while, I want to spend a Friday night in the dark with myself.  Horror helps feed that depression you get when you’re alone, in the dark, and all you do is download shit all day and watch it all night.

Little did I know that I had stumbled on Neil Marshall’s
sophomore horror movie.  He had launched
to cult fame with 2002’s excellent Dog
Soldiers, part of what we’ll call the Sean Pertwee year, where Dr. Who fans
everywhere could see Sean in just about every low budget UK-birthed movie for
2002-2003 and make comparisons to his father.
Dog Soldiers helped renew the
werewolf genre by – catch this – just doing the same sort of thing, but with a
good story and able actors.  This reemergence of the genre was quickly eclipsed by the far more successful Ginger Snaps franchise out of Canada which had three things going for it:  (1) Released in North America, so it made more money. (2) Played to the youth culture and (3) Had girls in it.  Namely bombshell Katharine Isabelle and gothic, ropey, mousy Emily Perkins.  Best of both worlds.  Go for the model in tight clothes, or follow the saga of the pasty-faced gypsy girl.  As the series matured, Emily Perkins sort of won the Hot Girl race.

I don’t know how she pulled that off, but I’m happy.  I am an Emily Perkins man.  Isabelle gets boring to look at, but Perkins
is so weird looking her beauty transcends the fact that she’s often covered in
blood and doesn’t know how to smile. Also, when you see her out of her Ginger Snaps role, she really is a
strikingly beautiful woman.

Have I mentioned Emily Perkins?

So, anyway, Dog
Soldiers provided solid action, loads of fun, some great acting, plenty of
gore and brought back the werewolf before Ginger
Snaps rode the wave to critical success by giving werewolves tits.  That tiny little movie that came out of Scotland didn’t make it over to the US until after Snaps, but those of us who know art
respected it.

Marshall,
now, has returned three years later with The
Descent, which is disturbingly similar to Dog Soldiers.  Remove the
tough soldiers and replace them with a cast of weekend warrior women failing to
bond with each other, put them in a cave, and instead of werewolves throw in
creatures based on the popular “Batboy” legends that are rife throughout the “Appalachian
Mountains, USA,” which is where the movie is set.  The license plates on the cars say North Carolina.  The breathtaking cinematography says:  Scotland.  But that’s okay, there’s some geological
connection between Appalachia and Scotland, you know.  So for people who have never been to North Carolina, or to Scotland, or ever seen either
locations in their lives, it’s possible to pull off.  No foul, though.  The movie’s set in a cave!

A year after the dramatic death of our lead star’s husband
and daughter (and it is upsetting), her group of go-get-em girls decide to set
up a bonding adventure in the “Appalachian Mountains, USA” and explore an
unnamed cave in the middle of nowhere.  They
drop down the yawning chasm into the opening chamber of a cave so
movie-friendly you know right away that they’ll never get out.  You’ve got the tough as nails guide, the
weekend survivalist who’s a jerk, the schoolteacher, our troubled heroine, and
some other chicks marked for death before they even get to the cave.  They’re like those soldiers who survive the
initial attack in Dog Soldiers, but
they still don’t have names because, well, they don’t matter.

Haunted by the memory of her dead daughter throughout the
entire film, our heroine follows the usual course from housemarmish and moody
in the beginning to Sigourney Weaver by the end as events unfold.  The girls are trapped by a cave in, lost with
no means of escaping, clumsy to the point of shattering bones, and hunted by unseen
creatures.  Their own emotional wellbeing
begins to plummet as they fight with each other and the bonds begin to
sever.

Enter Neil Marshall’s cave creatures, which make you jump at
every appropriate moment and, for Dog
Soldiers veterans, behave the same way as Marshall’s werewolves.  These are the fast fuckers.  And, you know, there’s some amazing stuff you
can do in a cave setting.  (What better
horror movie setting is there, really?)
What one fears is going to be a dim movie throughout is perfectly
managed.  The lighting is beautifully handled.  It’s almost a standout element in the film,
worth a run through just to study how Marshall
does it.  In the beginning, the use of
flares is clumsy (and illegal in US caves), and the “infrared” digicam is a bit
fishy, but if you’re prepared to overlook cave monsters then you can allow for
that stuff.

Marshall’s
also thrown in plenty of red herrings.
The largest of all being creepy little ghost girl, who exists solely in
our heroine’s mind.  What does she
represent beyond the slow, downhill slide to insanity?  Another element worth studying going into the
movie.  In fact, don’t consider this a
spoiler, because when all is said and done I sort of want to watch it again to
decode what the whole point of that sub-plot was.  Is the girl’s giggle trying to warn them or
is our heroine just a nutcase from the get-go?
Keep that in mind when you hit it.

It’s a tale of clumsy women, wicked vengeance, fast moving
scare-ums, tough girls, brutal hand-to-hand combat and brief moments of
intestine-devouring gore.

Marshall
has created his own formula.  The Descent is nothing new, if you’ve
seen Dog Soldiers, but it’s fun.  I also felt the ending was an enjoyable
mockery of horror films, and tastefully put together.  An area where Dog Soldiers did not deliver.
The creepiest part of the movie is right there at that finale.  A nice way to end a Friday, the night outside
bitterly cold, trees swaying in the wind.
Dark enough for cave monsters to be on the prowl.  And here I am without my climbing hammer and
a strong, cold knowledge that I probably wouldn’t be able to grab a monster’s
head and snap the neck in a moment of brave music and angry retribution for the
death of my friends.

————

Watch for:  Panicked
women making errors in judgment (or would that be Neil Marshall making errors
in writing?), super-digicam, leaving a can of pump-action kerosene behind when
you really could use that sort of thing, the inability to follow wall markers,
at least three horror-standard red herrings,  people who just go “ow” and stay standing if
you smash their knee with a climbing hammer, intestine slurping and a good old
pole through the face.  That’s my
favorite.

Nacho’s vodka rating:
Steer the course.  The Descent is Dog Soldiers with all the right changes.  Four stars.
Minus the fifth star due to a lack of nudity.  Come on, Marshall.
Seven girls sharing a cabin?  Just
throw us a bone.