Shauna Macdonald as Sarah swims in a pool gore in Lionsgate Pictures’ The Descent, © 2006

I find caves absolutely magnificent. There’s something about them, the cold, dripping feeling of the inside, the colors, and the beautiful masses of rock. For those of you who have been to Indian Echo Caverns, which I imagine is probably all of you, is that not a beautiful cave? Though, once the tour has reached around the half-way point, the guide takes you into a really uncomfortable passageway. You know the one, the ceiling gets really low, you see other tunnels that are unbelievably tiny, and of course you reach a dead end and they turn out the lights. For me, that is the only traumatic period during that entire tour. It’s the idea of being in a cave, far underground, with only darkness, and the haunting sounds of trickling water.

Think about this for a minute and I mean it. Imagine you are in a cave, alone, with no lights, and no way to tell where you are going. Are you alone down there? What’s that sound? What if I fall into a drop or water? What if you have the idea that you are getting closer to the exit, but you are really just getting farther and farther underground? “That’s a pretty big Matzoh ball you got hanging out there, Georgie-boy.”

Seeking thrills in America, a group of girlfriends take a white water rafting expedition. Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), after saying goodbye to her friends and meeting up with her husband (Oliver Milburn) and daughter (Molly Kayll), face a terrible car accident. Her husband is killed instantly (in a gory mess) and her daughter dies from her wounds. Two years later, still trying to recover from the traumatic experience and suffereing nightmares, her friends Juno (Natalie Mendoza), Beth (Alex Reid), Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), Sam (MyAnna Buring), and Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), decide it’s time to have another thrill.

They stay in a cabin in the North Carolina Appalachian Mountains, and have decided to take a trip as spelunkers in a local cave. After getting to the cave, and suffering a cave-in after Sarah gets stuck in an ultra-thin tunnel, the friends are trapped. The group feels relieved that they will be rescued by the moderators, but learn that Juno has lead them into an uncharted and supposedly undiscovered cave. She thought it would be a great experience to share something new and would help to bond them. They find cave paintings depicting two entrances, leaving them to believe there is another way out. Holly thinks she sees daylight, falls into a drop, and suffers a compound fracture. Sarah wanders off and spots a pale, bloody, humanoid drinking cave water. Of course, it is called off as a hallucination, until the members of the team are pulled away and eaten alive.

The Descent is basically Neil Marshall’s (Dog Soldiers) idea that sparked the American film, The Cave. I have not seen The Cave, though from the story line I’ve read, I’m not sure it would have appealed to me.

Neil Marshall’s writing sort of flip-flops between realistic and unrealistic. The dialogue between the friends before their expedition is pleasantly casual and enjoyable, and I found it to be refreshingly real. Something I haven’t found in a modern horror movie in a long time. During their expedition, is was as real as possible, but once a single character began wandering off by themselves into possibly dangerous areas, something felt very out of place. Here we have a film with realistic characters and conversations, yet they are still making similar stupid decisions.

A lot of the horror in this film isn’t so much from the monsters and the intense gore, but rather the idea of being alone in the cave, two miles underground, with the unknown. From the first few moments the group begins to prowl the cave, claustrophobia kicks in. The group navigates tunnels only around as wide and high as a computer screen, but when Sarah gets lodged, and the combination of Marshall and Sam McMurdy’s cinematography, you’re almost paralyzed in your seat.

The creatures themselves are nothing to spit at, but the way they are constantly thrown at both the audience and characters, you can almost always expect when they are going to pop out.

I’m not going to ruin any scary events in the film, but I will let you in on that the scares are almost directed in the opposite way that Alien was. In Alien, the beast is exposed by showing little shots of parts of it’s body in longer shots, but in The Descent, the full creature is shown in a rather short shot.

An impressive feat for this film, and I don’t usually yack about this often, is the lighting. In a cave so far underground, you cannot expect really any lighting except reflections of the rocks. We are shown the way with torches, glowsticks, and Sarah, our hero, navigates using night vision on her video camera. Occasionally revealing a creature, bone barrel, or a pool of gore.

The creature effects for this film needed an impressive amount of makeup and body work done, but the results are a Gollum and Orc love children, who in the end actually look a lot like the classic Nosferatu. Add loads of gore and some shrieking sounds and they have a pretty eerie creature.

I can’t remember the last horror film I reviewed that I considered to be in the range of fairly entertaining and unsettling. This film, has certainly earned that right, but I was hoping for something that would actually give me the scare I’ve been looking for in a horror movie. Well, if this is as good as they come in these past few years, golf clap.

Rated R for strong violence/gore and language.

Running time 99 minutes.

MAXimum Warning: This is definitely not a film to take your children to. If the ticket vendor denies entry because you must have an adult with you even if they bought your tickets, just listen to them. Very intense film.