Running Time: 99 min
Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Jackson Mendoza
Director: Neil Marshall
In a time when seemingly every avenue has been explored by makers of horror films, the premise of The Descent actually has a great deal of potential: a screenwriter’s goldmine of images of the subconscious mind and all that. Spelunking is loaded with potential danger, the unknown, and possibly for many, triggering phobias of darkness and tight spaces. Additionally, the choice to create an all-female ensemble cast is one that resonates with the possibility of something new. However, in an age of recycled scripts and well-trodden genre-films, perhaps hopes for originality and authentic, intellectual, and emotionally-driven films will always go unmet. And so it is with The Descent.
Now, I can’t say that The Descent is a horrible waste of time – as far as films go these days, it’s relatively painless; if you’re in the mood for a predictable, not-so-scary movie, The Descent will deliver some of the essential sound cues and visual stimulus that will make you jump and toss your popcorn. But if you’re hoping for that have-trouble-sleeping kind of horror, The Descent does not deliver. Instead of meeting expectations, The Descent grew dull, made mistakes, and finally, used cheap ploys to create temporary visceral scares.
So, the basics: we have six female characters that we don’t get to know much of anything about except that they frequently participate in extreme sports and look good in spandex. The two central characters, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and Juno (Natalie Jackson Mendoza), are quickly aligned as the protagonist and antagonist of the film and the others are left relatively unearthed. This anonymity of character was a serious detriment to the development of plot and emotion. There was a point about 20 minutes into the movie where I wondered: how many women are down in this cave? And, besides Sarah and Juno, who are the rest of them and how soon will they die? Clearly these were victims created for the sole purpose of violent gory kills.
The script had some strengths though. I thought that the development of Sarah and Juno’s relationship with Paul (Oliver Milburn) was well-established with early visual cues, avoiding possible extraneous overt exposition. The exposition came later naturally, but the early moments of the film worked well to create a situation that was both emotionally and intellectually charged.
So, when does it fall apart? Well, unfortunately, very soon thereafter. A major turning point in the film – a small tremor-induced cave collapse – is not only unlikely, but very nearly impossible. Now, I’m no world-class spelunker, but I have gone cave-exploring (yes, with a tour-guide) and I (having a natural fear of a mountain collapsing onto my head) actually asked about this very possibility. Consider the hundreds of thousands of years that these caves have been in existence, in this form – the film even announces this longevity with the ancient cave drawings depicting two entrances and the evolution of the violently-hungry cave-dwellers. Clearly, the cave’s collapse was merely an act of god, or as I like to call it, a writer’s device used to find a way out of a pinch. If the device had been somewhat intelligent or mildly creative, I’d have happily bought the unlikely twist of fate, but the lack of originality and validity left me rolling my eyes.
There is some effective cinematography in The Descent that emphasized the tight spaces of the caves, achieving a sense of claustrophobia. But where the cinematography succeeded, the editing style was questionable; over-use of fade out/fade up’s seemed like a directorial oversight. There is a section of the film where the women are concerned that their lights will burn out, leaving them in the dark – this editing style of fade to black would be a nice compliment to this theme, but the film does not achieve any consistency with this issue. The women are never left in the dark, their lights do not go out, they use supplemental lights inconsistently, and the editing style begins much earlier than the threat of their lights going out and is unaffected by the progression of plot. The editing style seemed to match with a previous directing goal which was never achieved in the final film. In essence, the editing style broke the flow of a film that was already struggling to find flow.
Another issue with The Descent: the creatures were problematic in their logic. The doctor spelunker (generic victim #3 maybe?) gave her expert opinion: that the creatures were blind and perfectly adapted to live in the cave – they hunted based on sound, as a bat; they hunt above ground and then bring the kills into the cave to feed. However, is this perfect adaptation? First of all, their hearing was not even remotely acute – these were not bat ears. Surely they can hear breathing and women whispering, inches away; all of these women should have been dead meat. Also, during the chase scenes, they clearly should have had the upper hand, knowing the caves and being comfortable in their blindness; their speed surely should have overtaken the women fleeing with their glowsticks and weak sense of direction. And when it comes to perfect adaptation, surely the creatures would have some sense of smell and the ability to feel heat and texture, especially if they hunt above ground? The idea that the creatures had no senses beyond a weak sense of hearing, made the creatures no longer appear as the frightening threat which the women perceived. I also didn’t understand their kill-logic; why did the creatures kill? If it was to feed, they left behind a lot of uneaten “food”. The creatures came off as strange thrill-killers who were relatively easy to kill. They didn’t even suffice as demons in our minds, which could have been one psychological interpretation of their existence (ie. Sarah, slaying her demons…).
However, the special effects were quite good. I was happy to see that CGI was not over-used in the creatures and that the blood effects were gory in a more realistic way than the excessive style of many recent films -I find that excessive gore only distances the audience from the true horror of real violence and death. The sounds effects for the creatures were, however, relatively unimaginative, recalling films like The Grudge and Aliens
I questioned this lack of originality throughout the film: the filmmakers frequently paid homage to other films in the genre: elements of Aliens, Carrie, Terminator, and The Grudge just to name a few. I wasn’t sure why they were referencing so many other films, except perhaps to clarify the film’s genre? Or did they want to let me know that they’d seen at least as many films as I had? Considering how savvy current audiences are, it seems unlikely that this would be met with any interest by anyone. Instead of making the filmmakers appear knowledgeable, they appeared overtly self-aware which made me wonder why they had nothing new to contribute to this genre.
I should also highlight that by using a nearly all-female cast, the filmmakers also seemed to be attempting statements about female strength and a feminist ideal, but I found that nearly all of these statements failed with the depiction of women in The Descent. I feel as though this is a topic I can’t even begin to discuss, but I will say that the statements depicted by the filmmakers were often problematic and at times, deeply troubling and contradictory. Admittedly, this may have simply been too much to attempt in a film of this scope.
The end of the film suffered with overt rebirth images and a last-minute cheap scare. As I’ve seen commonly used in horror films, one last jarring moment is thrown into the end of the film -it doesn’t even need to make sense. In an effort to scare us, filmmakers leave us with a strange, ambiguous ending – unfortunately, ambiguous in an uninteresting way; it felt as though they had simply given up.
While The Descent has a few interesting things going for it, it is predictably filled with disappointed potential. But if you want a decent story and a few cheap scares without really getting scared, then The Descent would be an alright renter. Don’t bother paying full price though – I doubt you’d think it was worth it.
