FILM REVIEW: "The Descent"

THE DESCENT (2005)

***1/2

Directed and written by Neil Marshall

Starring

Shauna MacDonald (“Sarah”)
Natalie Mendoza (“Juno”)
Alex Reid (“Rebecca”)
Saskia Mulder (“Beth”)
MyAnna Buring (“Sam”)
Nora-Jane Noone (“Holly”)

WHAT IT’S ABOUT

One year after a tragic car accident, six female friends get together and go on a caving expedition in the Appalachians to bond and resurrect their sundered friendship. However, the fun quickly and brutally ends as they find themselves lost in an untraversed cave and hunted by vicious, predatory creatures. As they attempt to get to the surface and escape the creatures, their group’s unity is fractured by death, lies, and betrayal.

WHAT WORKS

Quite a lot, fortunately. The budget for this film was relatively small, but Neil Marshall (writer and director) put that money where it counts...into great creature effects and set design.

No real caves were used in this film, but the sets look fantastic, and are filmed in a way that is simply beautiful, realistic, and makes so much sense, given the tone of the story. The light levels are kept very low, maximizing the characters’ (and the audience’s) sense of claustrophobia and fear. Marshall made the decision early on to not have any (if possible) extraneous sources of light in the deep caving scenes, and this really adds to the picture’s realism, and, startlingly enough, its beauty. It might seem odd to call a film with The Descent’s extreme levels of violence and brutality beautiful, but The Descent, with its bold, striking use of color and light, calls to mind Ridley Scott’s work (although, in all fairness, it’s impossible to out-Scott Scott) and the chiaroscuro painting style of Caravaggio. Marshall knows how to work to capture a beautiful scene on film, and in The Descent, he does so often.

Also well worth noting is the respectful treatment of the all-female cast. The horror genre is not one that always treats women with respect; a lot of the time, it seems that what fans want is just more blood, more mindless gore, and more bare breasts, preferably the ones on the women who will soon be axed by the crazed misogynistic killer. The Descent’s portrayal of women is refreshingly honest and non-exploitive; I never once got the feeling that either the characters or the actresses were being used as male fantasy figures (in the sense of being gratuitously nude or used as a subconscious outlet for male aggression) or being pigeonholed as “butch”, “macho”, or “unfeminine”. These ladies are beautiful because they’re fit, attractive women, not because they have breast implants which they flash every ten minutes for the camera.

This non-exploitive attitude was made very clear early on in the film, in a scene where one of the women takes a shower. In the hands of another writer or director, this might have become an opportunity to show some skin and titillate the men in the audience, perhaps while throwing in some red-herring scares. In The Descent, it’s exactly what it is, a person taking a shower. It lasts about one second and is not unduly eroticized.

Marshall gives notable depth to his characters, mostly with Sarah, Juno, and Beth; these are the film’s most important players and they feel like real people, with their own lives and individual stories, and with undercurrents of past tensions threatening their friendship from the film’s beginning.

Lastly, I must say that I found the crawlers in The Descent to be the film’s most fascinating concept, being that they are very strange and alien yet also remarkably human. The crawlers are monstrous, but not exactly villainous; Marshall even hints at the crawlers’ family units and emotional ties to each other. This ambiguity and lack of a clear villain gives The Descent a depth that many ‘creature-feature’ horror movies lack, and the re-watch value it adds makes the film all the more remarkable and intriguing.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK

As nearly perfect as it is, The Descent still has some problems—problems that could have easily been ironed out without much effect on the story.

One, I didn’t like that the setting was the Appalachian mountains. It’s a cliche to put every weird thing into the rural Southern mountains, and besides, America had no native cavemen (Europe, as evidenced by their cave art, did). Since Marshall has stated in interviews that the creatures are descendants of cavemen who never left the caves, this clashes with American natural history. I think setting the film in an unexplored European cave would have been much better, and I also think that the crawlers could have been the perfect explanation for the European folklore motif of the goblin or dwarf.

Another thing that grated on me was the noises that the crawlers made. They were based off of existing animal noises all too clearly. Instead of being terrifying, I found them distracting, as I was constantly thinking, “There’s a hyena, there’s a pig, there’s a...” Human noises, perhaps subtly altered, would have been a better choice for the crawlers, with perhaps some other ape sounds mixed in. After all, since the crawlers are descended from cavemen, so why do they sound like stuck pigs and whooping hyenas?

SO, HOW’S THE DVD?

There are currently two different DVD versions of The Descent available in the States -- the R-Rated version and the Unrated version. By all means, go for the Unrated version! It is simply one of the best DVD releases I’ve seen that doesn’t have “Special”, “Ultimate”, or “Limited” slapped up at the top of the DVD case. It’s excellent. If you’ve got the R-Rated cut and want what’s on the Unrated version, by all means, upgrade. You get so much bang for your buck with this DVD, it’s remarkable that they fit all this stuff on one little disc.

First of all, we get two commentary tracks, one with Neil Marshall and most of the cast, the next with Neil Marshall and top members of the crew. Both of these tracks are fun and/or informative. It’s clear that everyone had a really positive experience working on the film, and their enthusiasm for the project and enjoyment of each other’s company shines through.

“The Descent: Beneath The Scenes” is one of the better behind-the-scenes features I’ve seen on a DVD; it’s jam-packed with in-depth information on virtually every aspect of The Descent’s production, including the construction of the caves, the lighting, the casting, creature design, special makeup and effects like the numerous gory wounds sported by the cast... the list goes on and on. The behind-the-scenes footage is great, very enlightening, and often quite hilarious.

“DescENDING - Interview with Neil Marshall” is a decent little featurette about the controversial change to the film’s ending that the American theatrical release took when The Descent hit our fair shores. Neil Marshall talks about the two different ending and compares them to some of his own favorite horror films (along with the interesting comment that the American ending is not really a happy ending after all). The whole controversy is rather moot, given what I’ve heard about The Descent: Part 2; ultimately, this is a neat little featurette but is not essential to watch.

The DVD is rounded out by a copious helping of deleted and extended scenes, a neat storyboard and screen comparision feature where you can see the storyboard and watch the relevant snippet of film, a really fun and funny outtake montage set to an insanely catchy song, a stills gallery that’s nothing special but still nice, and cast and crew biographies.

Keep in mind, all of the above is what’s on the Unrated DVD; the R-Rated disc, I believe, has only one commentary, the film’s trailer, and none of the other features. The two versions are virtually the same price, so get the Unrated version. You’ll be glad you did.

"The Descent" on IMDB.

"The Descent" on YouTube: the official trailer.