"The Descent" is decent.

Posted by tinear (A) on August 26, 2006 at 05:29:50

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.

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Topic - "The Descent" is decent. - tinear 05:29:50 08/26/06 (16)

Re: "The Descent" is decent. - Troutbum 17:17:55 08/30/06 (0)

Re: "The Descent" is decent. - Jeff Starrs 06:20:32 08/26/06 (14)

A bit of deconstructing Descent: - tinear 10:21:09 08/26/06 (1)

Re: Exactly, good take...(nt) - Jeff Starrs 00:47:52 08/27/06 (0)

The most depressing thing about it? When the gals passed through - tinear 06:39:02 08/26/06 (11)

Re: I started to feel 'uneasy' - Jeff Starrs 07:39:11 08/26/06 (2)

But how would they know when that was? Hehehehehe. nt - tinear 10:14:49 08/26/06 (1)

Re: Genetically inbuilt thingy... - Jeff Starrs 17:14:21 08/26/06 (0)

I didn't dig it... - commonjailpig@yahoo.com 07:03:08 08/26/06 (7)

Common jail pig's "standards?" Tad oxymoronic? nt - tinear 10:16:20 08/26/06 (6)

Does this mean... - commonjailpig@yahoo.com 11:24:50 08/26/06 (5)

TouchÃ© on monickers-- but my music opinions, like my audio and film ones, - tinear 12:43:30 08/26/06 (4)

Exactly - commonjailpig@yahoo.com 14:55:57 08/26/06 (3)

Absolutely: by the ridiculous comparison to "Alien," which incontestably - tinear 15:04:40 08/26/06 (2)

Re: Absolutely: by the ridiculous comparison to "Alien," which incontestably - commonjailpig@yahoo.com 15:22:22 08/26/06 (1)

I think they were vulnerable because they were supposed to - tinear 06:05:25 08/27/06 (0)

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