The Descent - Austin American-Statesman movie review

'The Descent': Spelunking into the unspeakable

By CHRIS GARCIA
Austin American-Statesman

Take the cave — any deep, dank, steamy cave — as a metaphor for our worst and darkest fears, the kind we only entertain in the sheet-tangling throes of night sweats. Take the cave as a metaphor for the collective id, a bottomless hole of terrorizing anxieties and churning unpleasantries. Now jump in.

As you teeter at the mouth of a gaping chasm far in the Appalachian Mountains, writer-director Neil Marshall creeps up, pushes you and giggles as you tumble down. That's his ploy in "The Descent," a gory, wickedly effective freak-out set in the claustrophobic narrows and clammy cavities of the underworld, which becomes an easy stand-in for that Underworld you hear about in Sunday school. You know, that fun little place with endless suffering and flesh-eating demons.

Lionsgate

'The Descent'

3 out of 5 stars

The verdict: Drops you down the hole, then pours in some smart scares.

Director: Neil Marshall
Starring: Shauna MacDonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, Nora-Jane Noone
Run time: 99 minutes
Release date: August 4, 2006
Rating: R for strong violence/gore and language.
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Six women are down there, stuck. Screams echo beautifully in a place like this, a place like the bowels of a monster, all slimy, dripping surfaces and long stalactite teeth. The walls shimmer in a red volcanic glow (or is that a bloody shine?). Please ignore those distant growling sounds.

A smartly cast band of female spelunkers — packing their gear, their hangups and their tragic pasts — embarks on another thrill-seeking vacation. Early in the film, the group is seen wrapping up a white-water adventure. All's well until Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), her husband and child have a terrible car wreck and she's the sole survivor. Through the alchemy of terror, instinct and rage, Sarah's lingering emotional trauma will eventually be the source of her strength. My, how she will need it.

"The Descent" follows the contours of the classic horror-thriller: Friends enter a dangerous setting and are confronted with a force out to destroy them, sparking a paroxysm of terror and violence, in which only the strong survive, standing tall if battered. Parts "Deliverance," "Open Water" and, in its celebration of female fortitude, the "Alien" pictures (hell hath no fury like a woman bitten), this taut British import preys on our most vulnerable phobias, from cramped, unlighted spaces to the idea of bogeymen crouched in the dark.

It's base stuff, but Marshall executes his sharp script with a flair that toggles between minimalist psycho-exploitation and baroque visceral crunch. He fashions a jittery, video realism and gives full life to the six main characters, whose personal foibles clash in the compressed tension, investing the vertiginous action with emotional purpose. Marshall sustains a pitched intensity with lightning editing and savvy surprises not found in similar genre outings. He lays the stress on thick, with a sadistic paucity of comic relief.

When a tunnel collapse ruins all exits, the cavers face one harrowing challenge after the other. Their climbing ropes fray in sync with our nerves, until a gruesome plethora of fresh terrors bounds forth. Two summers ago, "Open Water" deftly exploited raw fears of being abandoned in a shark-infested ocean. Audiences shivered with panic, as they will watching "The Descent." Those at a local screening curled up in their seats, audibly winced, filling the theater with goose-bumpy dread.

A welter of third-act violence acts as a cathartic valve. Like Marshall's predictable werewolf thriller "Dog Soldiers," "The Descent" luxuriates in butcher-shop gore, guts and goo. The symphonic crunch and slurp harks back to the rococo gore in the films of Italian horror fiend Lucio Fulci. Bloody viscera becomes its own aesthetic. It's disgusting fun.

From the arterial sprays and broken bodies arises the message that you can never escape your demons, be they all-consuming psychic ones or those that literally (chomp) consume you. This is where Marshall makes his first mistake, sticking in a dumb final shot. The shot, a moldy genre trope, is so fast you can almost forgive his bad judgment. Almost.