2005
Written and Directed by Neil Marshall
Starring Shauna MacDonald and Natalie Mendoza
There does not seem to be a regular schedule for horror movies anymore. Apparently as long as they turn profits, minor or otherwise, horror films will regularly turn up on a continuous basis, regardless of quality. (Thanks to the public embrace of total garbage, Saw 3 will be in theaters soon.) It is not exactly a surprise why--horror movies do not require much of a script, much of a set, and for the most part, not much of a cast. The formula is pretty standard--take a group of young and attractive individuals, put them in an unlit situation and spend the last hour of the movie eliminating them in a constant scaling up of gruesomeness. The Descent may be a British import from last year, featuring only one actress American's have possibly seen (the scrappy Shauna MacDonald, cast member of the mildly popular Spooks, shown on the A & E network as MI-5), but The Descent hews closely enough to the American formula to make it indistinguishable from it's Yankee counterparts. Except for those accents, but by the end of the first 30 minutes, the only conversations are whispers and screams, and those don't really have a British or American connotation. The Descent is pretty standard fare, but it's a decent take on standard fare. As soon as the requisite night of drinking introduces our six plucky heroines, they dive right into the barely lit cave and proceed about the business of scaring the hell out of the audience. Never dull, The Descent is an excellent exercise in the incredibly banal genre of thriller/horror films. It's a sharp, incisive story, with surprisingly complex characters in a grindhouse format (the film, while not in 24 style "real time" covers a very short period of time in it's 99 minutes) that succeeds in re-using the old stables (cheap make-up, over the top slaughter and out-of-nowhere shocks) and still making them seem fresh and exciting. Although The Descent will not be winning any awards for innovative storytelling, it's one of the most satisfying American films in a summer full of overly expensive disappointments. (Which, considering it's a British movie from 2005 makes one depressed to go to the movies again until December.)
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