The Descent - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

'The Descent': Packed with exhilarating scares

By STEVE MURRAY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

From the dual meaning of the title to its relentless pacing, "The Descent" is one of the smarter, scarier endurance tests to hit screens in a long time. Fair warning: If you don't like getting jolted out of your seat by sudden shocks and great, slimy lashings of gore, pick another flick.

"The Descent" opens as a group of outdoorsy women friends come to the end of their white-water rafting trip. As they pack up their gear, British writer-director Neil Marshall sows the scene with hints of uneasy personal undercurrents. Before you get a chance to sort anything out, though — wham — the movie springs its first whiplash shock.

Lionsgate

'The Descent'

B+

The verdict: A smart, relentless shocker.

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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Cut to a year later. The women meet up again to do some caving in the Appalachians: cocky jock Juno (Natalie Mendoza), her young pal Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), practiced rock climber Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), med student Sam (MyAnna Buring), her half sister Beth (Alex Reid) and Beth's close friend Sarah (Shauna Macdonald).

Sarah is recovering from a personal crisis; the spelunking expedition is really just her friends' pretense to help her forget her troubles.

Um, it doesn't quite work out that way ...

Led by Juno into a cave no one has ever charted (something she reveals to her friends later than she should), the women find themselves in a very tight squeeze. Falling rocks seal their way out, so they have to search for another route to the surface — even if it means going farther down, wriggling through terrifyingly small spaces and dangling by their fingertips over chasms.

Mounting stress unravels the myth of sisterhood, and we start to understand more about those odd undercurrents from the first scene as little secrets from the past leak out. The movie's title alludes not only to a physical journey down, but also a psychological regression to basic survival instincts.

As they struggle to find daylight, the tension among the women reaches a nearly unbearable pitch. Then, Marshall — in a cheeky act of sadism toward his characters and his viewers — adds a fear factor worse then claustrophobia or the threat of being buried alive: The women realize they're not alone. And the creatures stalking them in the dark are quick, quiet and ... hungry.

That's as much as you need to know, except that Marshall wants his movie to drive you half insane with suspense — and mostly he succeeds. "The Descent" can send you out into the lobby giggling like someone who has survived the latest really scary Six Flags ride.

Amid the sudden scares and (literal) gallons of blood, Marshall plays homage to other movies, including "Alien" and "Carrie."

His film isn't perfect. Sometimes, it's hard to differentiate the characters in the darkness, and a few action sequences could have used a little more visual clarity. But, like Scott Smith with his current best-seller, "The Ruins," Marshall understands that sometimes there's nothing quite as oddly exhilarating as the bleakest, no-way-out kind of horror.