<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0Everything ever created suddenly available through any number of websites, from that missing bonus scene in Sodomania 38<\/em> 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<\/em>.\u00a0 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<\/em>, but Cleese brings a certain power to the reading. Amidst the entertainment avalanche downloaded each day, I snagged The Descent. <\/em>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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Little did I know that I had stumbled on Neil Marshall’s I don’t know how she pulled that off, but I’m happy.\u00a0 I am an Emily Perkins man.\u00a0 Isabelle gets boring to look at, but Perkins Have I mentioned Emily Perkins?<\/p>\n So, anyway, Dog Marshall, A year after the dramatic death of our lead star’s husband Haunted by the memory of her dead daughter throughout the Enter Neil Marshall’s cave creatures, which make you jump at Marshall’s It’s a tale of clumsy women, wicked vengeance, fast moving Marshall <\/p>\n ————<\/p>\n Watch for:\u00a0 Panicked Nacho’s vodka rating:
\nComplete with breathless chanting, which, when read that way, gives you an almost Lovecraftian sensation.
\nStop!\u00a0 Stop!\u00a0 You don’t know what you’re doing!\u00a0 Don’t read another – Oh my god…<\/p>\n
\nsophomore horror movie.\u00a0 He had launched
\nto cult fame with 2002’s excellent Dog
\nSoldiers<\/em>, part of what we’ll call the Sean Pertwee year, where Dr. Who fans
\neverywhere could see Sean in just about every low budget UK-birthed movie for
\n2002-2003 and make comparisons to his father.
\nDog Soldiers<\/em> helped renew the
\nwerewolf genre by – catch this – just doing the same sort of thing, but with a
\ngood story and able actors.\u00a0 This reemergence of the genre was quickly eclipsed by the far more successful Ginger Snaps<\/em> franchise out of Canada which had three things going for it:\u00a0 (1) Released in North America, so it made more money. (2) Played to the youth culture and (3) Had girls in it.\u00a0 Namely bombshell Katharine Isabelle and gothic, ropey, mousy Emily Perkins.\u00a0 Best of both worlds.\u00a0 Go for the model in tight clothes, or follow the saga of the pasty-faced gypsy girl.\u00a0 As the series matured, Emily Perkins sort of won the Hot Girl race.<\/p>\n
\nis so weird looking her beauty transcends the fact that she’s often covered in
\nblood and doesn’t know how to smile. Also, when you see her out of her Ginger Snaps role, she really is a
\nstrikingly beautiful woman.<\/p>\n
\nSoldiers<\/em> provided solid action, loads of fun, some great acting, plenty of
\ngore and brought back the werewolf before Ginger
\nSnaps<\/em> rode the wave to critical success by giving werewolves tits.\u00a0 That tiny little movie that came out of Scotland didn’t make it over to the US until after Snaps<\/em>, but those of us who know art
\nrespected it.<\/p>\n
\nnow, has returned three years later with The
\nDescent<\/em>, which is disturbingly similar to Dog Soldiers<\/em>.\u00a0 Remove the
\ntough soldiers and replace them with a cast of weekend warrior women failing to
\nbond with each other, put them in a cave, and instead of werewolves throw in
\ncreatures based on the popular “Batboy” legends that are rife throughout the “Appalachian
\nMountains, USA,” which is where the movie is set.\u00a0 The license plates on the cars say North Carolina.\u00a0 The breathtaking cinematography says:\u00a0 Scotland.\u00a0 But that’s okay, there’s some geological
\nconnection between Appalachia and Scotland, you know.\u00a0 So for people who have never been to North Carolina, or to Scotland, or ever seen either
\nlocations in their lives, it’s possible to pull off.\u00a0 No foul, though.\u00a0 The movie’s set in a cave!<\/p>\n
\nand daughter (and it is upsetting), her group of go-get-em girls decide to set
\nup a bonding adventure in the “Appalachian Mountains, USA” and explore an
\nunnamed cave in the middle of nowhere.\u00a0 They
\ndrop down the yawning chasm into the opening chamber of a cave so
\nmovie-friendly you know right away that they’ll never get out.\u00a0 You’ve got the tough as nails guide, the
\nweekend survivalist who’s a jerk, the schoolteacher, our troubled heroine, and
\nsome other chicks marked for death before they even get to the cave.\u00a0 They’re like those soldiers who survive the
\ninitial attack in Dog Soldiers<\/em>, but
\nthey still don’t have names because, well, they don’t matter.<\/p>\n
\nentire film, our heroine follows the usual course from housemarmish and moody
\nin the beginning to Sigourney Weaver by the end as events unfold.\u00a0 The girls are trapped by a cave in, lost with
\nno means of escaping, clumsy to the point of shattering bones, and hunted by unseen
\ncreatures.\u00a0 Their own emotional wellbeing
\nbegins to plummet as they fight with each other and the bonds begin to
\nsever.<\/p>\n
\nevery appropriate moment and, for Dog
\nSoldiers<\/em> veterans, behave the same way as Marshall’s werewolves.\u00a0 These are the fast fuckers.\u00a0 And, you know, there’s some amazing stuff you
\ncan do in a cave setting.\u00a0 (What better
\nhorror movie setting is there, really?)
\nWhat one fears is going to be a dim movie throughout is perfectly
\nmanaged.\u00a0 The lighting is beautifully handled.\u00a0 It’s almost a standout element in the film,
\nworth a run through just to study how Marshall
\ndoes it.\u00a0 In the beginning, the use of
\nflares is clumsy (and illegal in US caves), and the “infrared” digicam is a bit
\nfishy, but if you’re prepared to overlook cave monsters then you can allow for
\nthat stuff.<\/p>\n
\nalso thrown in plenty of red herrings.
\nThe largest of all being creepy little ghost girl, who exists solely in
\nour heroine’s mind.\u00a0 What does she
\nrepresent beyond the slow, downhill slide to insanity?\u00a0 Another element worth studying going into the
\nmovie.\u00a0 In fact, don’t consider this a
\nspoiler, because when all is said and done I sort of want to watch it again to
\ndecode what the whole point of that sub-plot was.\u00a0 Is the girl’s giggle trying to warn them or
\nis our heroine just a nutcase from the get-go?
\nKeep that in mind when you hit it.<\/p>\n
\nscare-ums, tough girls, brutal hand-to-hand combat and brief moments of
\nintestine-devouring gore.<\/p>\n
\nhas created his own formula.\u00a0 The Descent<\/em> is nothing new, if you’ve
\nseen Dog Soldiers<\/em>, but it’s fun.\u00a0 I also felt the ending was an enjoyable
\nmockery of horror films, and tastefully put together.\u00a0 An area where Dog Soldiers<\/em> did not deliver.
\nThe creepiest part of the movie is right there at that finale.\u00a0 A nice way to end a Friday, the night outside
\nbitterly cold, trees swaying in the wind.
\nDark enough for cave monsters to be on the prowl.\u00a0 And here I am without my climbing hammer and
\na strong, cold knowledge that I probably wouldn’t be able to grab a monster’s
\nhead and snap the neck in a moment of brave music and angry retribution for the
\ndeath of my friends.<\/p>\n
\nwomen making errors in judgment (or would that be Neil Marshall making errors
\nin writing?), super-digicam, leaving a can of pump-action kerosene behind when
\nyou really could use that sort of thing, the inability to follow wall markers,
\nat least three horror-standard red herrings, \u00a0people who just go “ow” and stay standing if
\nyou smash their knee with a climbing hammer, intestine slurping and a good old
\npole through the face.\u00a0 That’s my
\nfavorite.<\/p>\n
\nSteer the course.\u00a0 The Descent<\/em> is Dog Soldiers<\/em> with all the right changes.\u00a0 Four stars.
\nMinus the fifth star due to a lack of nudity.\u00a0 Come on, Marshall.
\nSeven girls sharing a cabin?\u00a0 Just
\nthrow us a bone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[403,353],"class_list":["post-2570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2570"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2697,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2570\/revisions\/2697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}