The Descent (2006)
On occasion, films resolve an inherent problem with the haunted house premise: why don’t these people just leave? Alien famously did this by moving it to outer space, The Shining by making it snow-bound.
The Descent does it by moving us to underground caves, which a team of six adventure-seeking women plan to be the first to discover and chart. Of course, being the first down there reduces their ability to find their way around and, of course, they aren’t exactly alone after all.
But it is to director Neil Marshall’s credit (this is his second feature; his first, Dog Soldiers, wasn’t released theatrically in this country) that the film is well enough along and tense enough before we even glimpse any monsters. In fact, the cave exploring mission is made scary enough that the film would have been a worthy entry if it were just that.
And it is this patience, this gradual notching up of the tension that makes the last bits of the film so effectively terrifying and intense. The Descent treats itself with a sense of internal logic. It means to scare well and often, but then to not fall apart under scrutiny.
Introducing what amount to fairly ridiculous creatures any sooner, or making them any more central, would have sank this film. A fan of horror films has to appreciate being taken for intelligent and discerning. We know the genre can mire in clichés, and it is nearly a tenet of the form that the characters are less textured than in other genres. We are, in the end, attaching to primal, tribal fears, so it fits that our characters are more archetypes than people; we don’t want them to be too well articulated. We become frightened because we can easily remove them and place ourselves there. Too textured and individual a set of characters, and we’re more easily distanced and distracted.
The characters here, while hardly life-like, are effective, and the story moves along at such a clip that we become involved early on, before doubt can get a hold of us. The cave setting helps a lot; the claustrophobia there is palpable and the film’s gradual closing of the physical space speaks more to internal emotional struggles than the dialogue does; that sort of physicality pervades The Descent.
Of course, when the fighting starts and the action needs to be kicked up, we’ve already moved into a wider, lager space in the caves. This is a convenience we can afford. And it isn’t one we’re likely to notice during this frenzy. We’re even less likely to complain about it.
There are a handful or two of heavy-handed symbolisms, but again, perhaps being leaner on character development (apart from the car accident back story for our main heroine) permits us a bit more tolerance for such images. Birth and re-birth are the main motifs, so the nature of the space we’re in allows a bit of latitude there too.
There are, too, a couple of anatomical conveniences with the creatures that undermine plausibility slightly (though it still holds well enough). Although, without these concessions to mere humans, without this handicapping of the creatures, it wouldn’t be much of a fair fight.
But by making the characters here adrenaline junkies and physically capable thrill seekers, it is a plausibly fair fight as dealt. We’ve seen them, by this point, physically competitive, strong, and seen them take some pretty hard knocks in the caves, without so much as a wince from any of them (that is a slight exaggeration, but not too much at all).
We have a solid precedent for them to fight tough and hard when the creatures appear. This is nice. It is an immediate implausibility in the “women in peril” variety of thrillers that a typically meek or withering person can, in a matter of a few hours, learn to fight off or even best something (or someone) that lives with this kind of violence probably everyday. It is nice to see people we know are tough make use of that toughness.
The twist here is that one of our women is afraid nowadays (thanks to the aforementioned car accident), but used to be one of the tougher ones, so when we see her transform, and start to fight fiercely and with deadly skill, we believe it.
While The Descent doesn’t really bring anything truly new to the genre, it is clear that Marshall knows the genre well, and knows what things have always needed improvement. It improves a few standard elements of the horror film, and shows how a well executed one can be a taut and thrilling experience.
HDFEST RATING:
Overall: A-
Acting: B
Plot: A-
Originality: B
Enjoyability: A
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