The Descent (Unrated Widescreen Edition)
© Lionsgate

Mania Grade: A-
Show Grade: A
Disc Grade: B+
Reviewed Format: DVD
Rated: Not Rated
Cast: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, MyAnna Buring, Nora-Jane Noone
Writer: Neil Marshall
Director: Neil Marshall
Distributor: Lionsgate
Original Year of Release: 2005
Extras: Widescreen 16x9 enhanced 2.35:1; English DD 5.1 Surround EX & DD 2.0; CC; English & Spanish subtitles; audio commentary tracks; deleted/extended scenes; outtakes; interview; behind-the-scenes featurette; gallery; trailers
Suggested Retail: $28.98

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"The Descent"

Anyone paying attention to Hollywood studio filmmaking knows that originality is often at a minimum. Any given year will see more than one major film about vampire blacksmiths or talking racing dogs or whatever released. So it should come as no surprise that the same sort of “cross-pollination” is even more prevalent among genre filmmaking. The Descent has the disadvantage of being released not too long after a few films with similar premises – The Cave and Centipede come immediately to mind – as it appears a lot of screenwriters read the same articles about caves in National Geographic. That’s the only disadvantage this film has, as The Descent is firing hot on all the traditional cylinders, while inventing one or two new ones.  
 
Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) makes her first attempt at getting over the accidental deaths of her husband and daughter by going on a trip to the Appalachians with five of her girlfriends. Her good friend Juno (Natalie Mendoza) has planned a special adventure for them all. After a night of laughs in a comfy log cabin, the six plucky Brit ladies head off for a bit of spelunking in a little known cave. After descending deep underground, the party comes close to tragedy when Sarah is nearly crushed in a cave-in, and when they subsequently become disoriented, it comes out that Juno has actually gotten them into a completely unexplored cave.  
 
Things look bad for these women, but become much worse. During their descent, Sarah has had a peripheral awareness of something stalking them, but hasn’t bee able to determine whether it’s something real or one of the hallucinations she’s suffered ever since the accident. Now, she sees these things more plainly, and before she can be convinced that they’re all imagined, the group is attacked by these “crawlers” (as writer/director Neil Marshall dubbed them – but we all know Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers when we see them). The survivors of the initial attack are separated, and have to dig into their own inner beast in order to survive long enough to see daylight again.  
 
Marshall first impressed the horror fan community with the poorly distributed Dog Soldiers, in which a British platoon has to defend themselves from a clan of werewolves in the Scottish countryside. He takes much the same structure and strengths from that film and makes everything more believable, involving and effective. What’s more, the underground environment is far more menacing place to defend yourself from creatures than Dog Soldiers’ farmhouse. With their beauty and UK accents, at first it seems a little like the film might turn into The Spice Girls vs. the Monsters. But by treating the characters and situations with integrity, Marshall brushes aside the issue of sex and involves the viewer totally in the struggle for survival. In this unrated presentation of the original UK version, there’s also an extra notion that there may be something else going on underground than what we’ve seen.