The Descent

The concept of crawling through tight, winding, unfamiliar tunnels is scary enough. But, of course, this movie moves far beyond that.

This movie has a great setup with a close group of long time friends having fun and reuniting for different outdoor adventures.

From the beginning the directing is great. You really get a sense of adventure and the anxiety/excitement that goes into exploring a cave. It portrays it well and brings home the endeavor that cave exploration is.

The story is engaging as it builds. They run into natural trouble that's bad enough. But then the dire situation becomes far worse.

This movie is genuinely suspenseful. The gore is well done. The characters are sympathetic. The emotion builds to a fever pitch.

There are some shocking elements to the ending.

It is a great movie and there is no way it should be rated anything less than an 8 out of 10.

It really is well done. With relatable characters you can actually care about. It's considered a classic by many for a reason. It's legitimately uncomfortable, suspenseful and scary. And well directed. It's just a great movie.

The Descent is an exceptionally good film. I just wanted to state that at the start of this review, because it is easy to dismiss a film like The Descent as having some good gore scenes, but little else to commend it from a directorial or cinematographic point of view. However, with what must have been a budget that pales into insignificance when compared to films like Ring 2, the film packs in top class gore with exquisitely detailed 'creatures' and brilliantly claustrophobic cinematography.

Films with great gore abound, for example Jason X, with the audience just waiting for the next gruesome killing to end the tedium in between. However, The Descent keeps you at the edge of your seat throughout, struggling for breath as you feel the walls in the cinema closing in. This is a film to watch in a very dark cinema with great surround sound. You almost feel the creatures closing in around you.

I would have given 10 out of 10, but some of the acting is not top class, so that brings it down to 9 out of 10 for me. That aside, this is a must watch film for those who complain that horror films just aren't scary anymore. Just make sure that whoever you take with you is prepared for the experience. Word of mouth is sure to make this film a success.

An interesting and differentiated horror movie in the "gore" style. It is above average for the genre. It started slowly, but after half it became interesting, maintaining a tense atmosphere, a little frightening and claustrophobic. The atmosphere is good. It can be divided into two parts: before and after the cave. You sit on the armchair during the exhibition with that feeling of agony and distress. It escapes from the usual clichés to the genre, having an unconventional and surprising ending. There are some logic flaws in the plot and the characters, but nothing that compromises the story. The curiosity is to see the cast practically all feminine. It's worth as entertainment. I recommend it to all lovers of horror art.

A friend picked The Descent as a film for us to see together and I wasn't all that excited about the choice. I was very mistaken. The Descent is a scary fun film. If you're claustrophobic or in general just don't like tight spaces then you might find this film particularly unnerving. The descent down into the tiniest caves and crevices of the earth gave me considerable anxiety. During their exploring of the caves they start to get the feeling that they are not down there alone. Something else is down there but just not sure what it is. That alone creates even more tension and fright to be down a space like that with some unknown creature around. It was at this time that for me it went in a different direction with the creatures becoming the new central element of the story. This is fine but it kind of turned into a more typical killer monster/creature thing. Sure they idea of the creatures being down there is good but the extent to which they are utilized was a bit too much for me. Despite this one criticism, The Descent is definitely a film to check out.

The Descent is a little Alien, some Predator, and quite an amount of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The story involves a group of cave explorers' journey through a deep cave, two miles underground. They don't necessarily make a great team-they seem unplanned, and we would go on to the third act, and figure out that they lack strategy as well. That is when some of the members become badass heroines, joining the bloodfest in the cave, where the unknown lies await.

Simplistic as it is, The Descent offers an excellent atmosphere and very creative moments. The opening shows a shocking event that becomes a minor plot device. The entire first half is a better adventure film than a horror one; the team's first enemy is the landscape. There are lots of "setup" shots showing items that will inevitably appear later. Writer/Director Neil Marshall has an impressive style, especially for some amazingly lighted claustrophobic scenes.

The thing is, these wonderful 50 minutes set my expectation high, that I found the latter half underwhelming. Fake jumpscares are a prominent element in the movie. There is so much of it that the real ones are less effective. The tone makes a 180-degree shift, changing to a lot of gory fights and killings. They should be thrilling experiences, but the problem is I simply can't see what's going on, because: 1. The scenes are extremely dark, which is realistic but unworkable for fight sequences. 2. The team all have the same gear, look, and voice. I have a hard time distinguishing them. 3. The editing makes a shift as well; the cuts are intensely quick, making my eye sore by looking at it for too long.

But The Descent is a sufficient horror movie, because it is so interestingly constructed, and Marshall has great talents. Watching the characters, the situation and the film itself descend into madness is of great fun.