The Descent

Writer/director Neil Marshall has been described as a member of the ‘splat pack’, an honorific for directors of the new wave of brutal horror films (a catalogue which includes Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek, 2005). His last effort was the werewolf horror movie Dog Soldiers (2002). This time Marshall takes a step back to more fundamental themes: claustrophobia, blindness, people out of place and time turning against each other.

The Descent starts on edge, with a strange undercurrent hinting at tensions between the lead characters and some of their partners on a rafting trip. But after an accident, the movie shifts to the six women meeting for their annual caving trip. Their fearless, or foolish, leader, leads them to an unexplored cave and things soon go wrong. Rocks fall, lights go out, and the cinematography does amazing things with large amounts of black and tiny patches of light. The screen is so black, you’ll feel like you too have hundreds of metres of black rock pressing in on you. The plot involves a lot of squeezing through tight spaces and general running around, but the characters do somehow have time to reveal some insights into the splintering friendships. With the group divided, it looks like the bat-men will have an easy, if scary, conquest.

Oh, didn’t I mention the bat-men? In comparison to the psychotic gratuity of splat films like the Saw trilogy and Hostel, good old fashioned vampiristic bat-men almost seem restrained. The splat pack’s new generation, more extreme horror flicks may be easy money for financiers, but a little self-restraint produces real dividends and even some effective characterization. Sure, a more sophisticated film might use the disturbing language of screen violence to greater effect, perhaps by inviting sympathy for the killers. But we are dealing with scary bat-men, so tone down your expectations a little and watch The Descent hit the line between white noise and something memorable, between the gratuitously bloody and the frightening half-seen. It’s simple, but effective.

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