Originally published in Verbicide issue #19

Lions Gate Films
99 min., dir. by Neil Marshall, with Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, and Alex Reid

If you’ve heard that The Descent is one of the best horror movies to be made in this millennium, you’ve heard correctly. With jump-out-of-your-skin shockers, an intensely eerie atmosphere, and some of the creepiest monsters to haunt the reel since Aliens, Neil Marshall’s recently released to DVD scarefest lives up to its hype.

Both written and directed by Marshall, The Descent tells the macabre tale of seven thrill-seeking female friends who reunite to explore a vast underground cavern for an afternoon of spelunking fun. Their plans quickly go wrong when they discover their leader has brought them to a previously unexplored cave system in hopes of being the first to discover its secrets. However, the only things to be found are man-like predators with a taste for blood. In a world of total darkness and certain doom, each woman begins to take her own descent into madness.

It seems like any way you approach this film, it never exposes itself to negative criticism. Marshall, who previously directed the werewolf frightener Dog Soldiers, has perfected his craft with his sophomore effort. Where most other horror flicks fall short and reveal their weaknesses, The Descent never falters. For instance, one of the worst flaws of a splatter picture is how long it takes to get to the action. However, these hapless women are thrust into danger before you can brace yourself for the scares to come.
The Descent is filmed almost exclusively underground, a setting that might lend itself to pitch black scenes where you can’t tell what’s going on. But unlike a film such as Touristas that is so poorly lit you can’t tell who’s good or bad, Marshall comes up with clever, and more importantly, realistic ways to light his sets in even the darkest tunnel. My personal favorite is the use of a camcorder’s night vision in one of the film’s scariest scenes.

But perhaps the crowning achievement of The Descent is its atmosphere. Even before the “Crawlers” make their first appearance, I was pretty much convinced that spelunking was not for me. Even if you’re not claustrophobic, you may find Marshall’s camerawork to cause your breath to shorten as the walls literally close in around these unfortunate characters. And speaking of characters, let’s not forget to mention that the leading ladies of The Descent aren’t only nice to look at, but it appears Marshall found some pretty decent actors in each of these brave women. The Descent not only supplies good amount of blood and guts, but will sink its teeth into your brain with some extremely heavy psychological horror.