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Six girls who have known one another for awhile occasionally get together for adventurous outings. This time, not long after a personal tragedy befell one of them, the choice is spelunking. It is nice to see a film where ALL the participants are women: no men to save these damsels.
S P O I L E R FOLLOWING:
For approximately 2/3s of the film, it progresses as a standard adventure thriller with lots of excitmenent and not a monster in sight. The women fairly are interesting, with enough character delineation so that the average attentive viewer can keep them straight (a major problem with many war, adventure, and crime films wherein there are many characters).
The problem is the director makes us wait so long for the appearance of the "creatures," and creates so many false "gotcha" scenes, that when they do come for the gals, we've become jaded and experience more relief than horror.
I suppose the creatures are evil-looking enough and certainly their eating habits are grotesque but... no, they're not very terrifying.
The director obviously understands adventure but horror? No. It isn't enough to scare a viewer, as Hitch remarked, any teenager can jump from behind a door and scare someone.
To create true fear, or horror, in an audience requires skills which this poor fella doesn't.
Finally, though the genre isn't about exercises in logic, this one falters right out of the gate: humans that lived beneath the ground long enough to become blind through adaptation, and that hunted above ground, would have stayed in the "outside" world, right?
Or they would have died out underground after either starving or cannibalizing each other.
The other problem is more generic: why, in the lesser of these films, must people persist in going off alone for long periods of time when it is obvious that exactly is what NOT do do? The good films omit this standard fault.
Also, in his attempt to be "original," the writer threw in what he obviously felt was a brilliant twist: a murdering member of the party. But the murderer, see, wasn't really a murderer but was so fingered by... well, this plot device really is unforgivable. It makes sense only for a writer who had was searching for a plot device and overreached his grasp.
Still, it is good popcorn fun. I hooted and jumped around quite a bit. A hell of a lot, actually.
These kinds of movies seldom stand up to serious criticism so don't let me spoil it for you: go and be entertained.
Follow Ups:
Saw this tonite. Obviously, it will not win any Oscars, but I enjoyed every minute of it.
Glad you enjoyed it - I did, too.
women are forced to go underground to enter, what they feel, a women's world.
Once there, however, they discover it's a world where men will devour them even though the men have obvious shortcomings, i.e. they're blind to what hope the women could offer them.
The women end up contributing to their own downfall, victims of their petty jealousies.
Who survives? The woman that is the most aggressive and least sentimental; the one that has lost all typical familial bonds.
Okay, enough, my head hurts.
*
that wet hole and emerged on the other side, the director (bowing to feminist wishes?) carefully omitted training the camera upon their t-shirted chests.
Plus... I was saddened the Irish chick disappeared so quickly, she was the most interesting (I believe her family name was Mendoza: she sure did a good accent if she wasn't a Micky).
..when the only guy in the film got offed in the first few minutes.
By the way, if you hunted your human food above ground and were blind, you'd probably want to get back down into the caves before the sun came up!
a
..in horror films, there's ALWAYS an answer.
Well - If one allows their standards to cave in to rock bottom, then I suppose the indiscriminate Descent viewer wouldn't feel shafted. Me? After the first 15 minutes I was "bored".
a
Does this mean... Your observations about music have no merit? Actually Tin, commonjail... an anagram of my name.
are but mine own and probably mean nothing (nor should they) to anyone else.
I have fun writing down what I think, that's all.
Say, do you have a blind spot about "Descent?"
And... does the title refer obliquely to "The Ascent of Man?" (and accompanying descent of woman)
My blind spot might be based on some expectations based on the "best since Alien" advertisements. As I wrote in a post below, it was "no Alien". My biggest gripe- I am easily annoyed by shocks caused by loud digital screams. Descent was based on these kind of manipulative ploys. Of course one is going to jump out of their seat if an unexpected noise occurs that rivals a 747 landing.I grant you that the monsters were creepy but they were too vulnerable and easily killed. I would have preferred one or two invincible creatures (like the original Alien) instead of the brood of blind jellyfish. I suppose this was to get the most mileage out of the gross out death scenes which were a-plenty. You know, axes in the head, thumbs popping out eyes .... urp!
I didn't consider your "The Ascent of Man?" observation. As usual, you bring up something to consider. By the way -I always enjoy your posts.
yours truly, commonjailpig
is a masterpiece, a let down was inevitable.
My wife, btw, differs with your opinion: she likes the idea of vulnerability in monsters.
I'm sure you realize that, to follow the storyline, these particular "jellyfish" had to be mortal.
I don't know about "easily killed:" they seemed to take your average horror films' fatal abuse. The girl with that pick in the throat, however... I wonder how she had built up so much scar tissue.
I like vulnerability in monsters too! As in ...let's say Frankenstein ? But that takes some character development and a complete different arena then Descent. The monsters in Descent were vulnerable to allow for gratuitous violence.
be human, not aliens from outer space, right?
Also, the girls were buff athletes but the monsters were cave-dwelling, Vitamin D starved scavengers.
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