August 4, 2006
The Descent hits theatres today. If you appreciate a good scare at all, go see it. It's the best horror film in quite some time and one of the best films this year, horror or otherwise.
A small review, reasons why you should see it now, in the theaters, and why the marketing campaign and Lions Gate suck, all after the jump.
Written and directed by Neil Marshall, The Descent has a simple plot: a group of friends go spelunking in an unexplored cave system, become trapped, and then find out they're not alone. It's an incredibly claustrophobic and suspenseful film that takes its time to establish characters and relationships, with nary a cannibal beast in sight for more than the first half of the film.
Neil Marshall's last film, Dog Soldiers, is the sort of film that showed just enough promise to become quickly overrated by its many champions. The Descent delivers on that promise, with strong characters, spot-on performances, genuine scares, and the most tense solid half hour I've spent in a theatre. It's the sort of film that makes you jump, but stays scary after the "Boo!" moment.
I watched the film at home off of a DVD that paused for ten seconds every five minutes or so (not bootleg - just a different region that my DVD player wasn't playing nice with), and it still built up enough tension to make me jump multiple times and remain creeped out after the film was over. And when I watched it again a couple of weeks later, I still jumped.
I can't recommend enough that you go see this film sooner than later, though, so as to see it with a crowd. I caught it at an outdoor screening at the John Ford Amphitheatre as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival, and it was easily the biggest, most enjoyable crowd reaction I've ever seen or been a part of. I have never seen so many people jump at once, nor heard so many out-loud screams in a theater ever.
As a side note, the marketing for the film in the US has been pretty terrible. From the not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is poster, to the "From the studio that brought you Saw and Hostel" misdirection-in-the-wrong-direction, I'm aware that the film looks like a slightly gorier retread of that Cave film from last year you probably already forgot about. This film has nothing in common with either Saw or Hostel's assault-on-the-senses filmic violence - if anything, the film has more in common with 28 Days Later (though that's not quite apt, either).
The studio touting itself is a shame, too, as apart from creating a braindead marketing campaign, the only other addition they've made from the film is a significant edit - they've removed the last 2 to 3 minutes of the film. It drastically changes the ending, making it seem like your standard horror-film copout -
"How do we end this now?"
"Dunno. How 'bout an unmotivated false scare?"
It's not enough to ruin the film - the rest of the film is too strong for that - but the original ending very nicely pulls the rest of the film together in a way that the US edit doesn't. (If you've seen the current version and are curious to know how the original version ends, email me.
Go see it already.
Posted by starlen at August 4, 2006 8:24 AM
