DESCENT

THE DESCENT: With enough time passed to differentiate director Neil Marshall’s grueling experience from the other “monsters-in-a-cave” movie released that year, audiences can finally view the film without the urge to compare and contrast. That is if you even bothered to see 2005’s The Cave starring Cole Hauser...which very few did. But The Descent didn’t fare much better, which was surprising considering the overseas buzz that was building before the Stateside release by horror specialists Lionsgate. As horror fans are prone to do, they overpraised the film to the point of hailing it “as good as Alien” (which it’s not) and then didn’t show-up in theaters, possibly because the film had already been out on DVD in Region 2 for close to a year. So The Descent was left hanging, ignored as a “been-there done-that” afterthought of a film that no one saw in the first place. Well, here’s your chance to make amends. The truth is, despite being a marked improvement over Marshall’s last film, Dog Soldiers, The Descent is still a niche product. But that’s exactly what makes it so entertaining to genre fans. Marshall has upped his game - employing better actors, more polished effects and a stripped-down visual style – while not compromising on the brutality that might offend mainstream audiences. The film literally swims in blood, ooze and gore, yet there’s a purpose behind it. And Marshall takes his time establishing the relationships of his all-girl spelunkers before unleashing his blind monstrosities to tear them apart. The story is straight out of “Horror 101”: six thrill seeking women approaching their thirties find themselves trapped in an unexplored cave system. The bad news is they’ll run out of air in a day or two. The good news is they don’t have to worry about a slow painful death because the caves are populated by freakish man-eating humanoids. Hooray! Marshall has been justly praised for not relying on computer technology to bring his creatures to life. Although there were a few false moments when watching the flick in theaters, the small-screen suits his creations just fine; pale, fleshy, wall-crawling beasties, they’re guaranteed to scare the pants off you at least once during the movie. And it’s also to the film’s credit that the most impactful confrontation occurs over a long-simmering grudge between the two main characters, holding back its sparse plot points for maximum effect. The Descent isn’t revelatory, but it is committed to using every trick in the book to make you scream. That’s gotta be worth a least a rental. THE FEATURES: Lionsgate gives viewers several options with unrated and R-rated versions plus a suped-up edition on Blu-ray (if you’re one of those big spenders). But for our purposes we’re checking out the original unrated cut which includes a healthy slate of extras. There are two audio commentaries, both featuring director Neil Marshall (one time joined by the cast, another time by the crew) and a good bit of deleted scenes that were obviously cut to keep the pace tight. The Beneath the Scenes featurettes is a rather entertaining press kit in which Marshall admits his chief influences on the film: Deliverance, Alien and The Shining but has enough of a sense of humor to have dubbed his flick “Six Chicks with Picks.” It’s a good well-rounded look at what was involved in the film with a specific emphasis on the actors. Descending: an interview with Neil Marshall has the director touch upon the alternative ending, which was used only in the States. Apparently we can’t handle the bleak stuff. The Outtakes section adds a bit of humor to an otherwise unrelentingly depressing film (the green screen dance number by one of the “creatures” is a particularly nice touch). Storyboards, Stills and a Cast and Crew Biography close out the disc.