The Descent

Review by Jason Gaston

I'm going to let you good people in on a little secret about me. I am highly claustrophobic. I'm serious I can't stand being in a single confined space for more than a few seconds and if I get in one, I'll do anything to bust out. It's quite a spectacular sight considering how large I am. I mean, they should put it on Jerry Springer or something.

Perhaps that's why this new British import called The Decent has affected me so. It takes place deep underground in a cavern, it's dark, and there are all these naked things trying to eat a bunch of female spelunkers.

Actually I'm not exactly sure how that last part works in the claustrophobia, but you got it anyway.

This is a very highly effective horror movie. It's tense and leaves you gripping the armrests of your theater seats in dreadful anticipation of what horrible thing will happen next.  Sure, sure, I know... I've said this about horror movies in the past. However, you see... in The Descent, all of this chair arm grabbing and heavy breathing by the audience is all done before the icky naked creatures show up at all.

That's right children, much of the horror in the first hour of this movie is achieved simply by the fact that these women are down in the cave, they are trapped, and they're in perilous situations. Nothing is trying the eat them, rape them, or steal their purses at this point. Just rampant claustrophobia and it works oh so wonderfully well.

This is how masterful a movie The Descent is. It relies not on latex monsters or some lame gimmick but rather on our pure primal fear.

Of course, once those nasty naked monsters start showing up, the movie really kicks into overdrive and becomes all that more grisly. I do have to say, that these "crawlers" as they are being called by this film fans, are some of the most disturbing and off-putting movie monsters I've seen of late. Perhaps it's that old adage... the more they remind us of ourselves, the more we are repulsed by them.

However, all of that being said... the crawlers are not the real monsters of the movie. Again, tying into the primal fear of been confined and trapped, the real monster of the movie is human nature itself. I believe it was a stroke of genius to cast all of the main parts in this film as women. It is such a cliché breaking move, that you don't see the movie's message until it's staring you in the face at the end. The fact that human nature can be the most terrifying monster of them all.

Of course if you're not in on message movies, The Decent is still a great great movie. It's got action, it's got drama, it's got blood, and of course it's got loads and loads and loads of pure horror. When did America lose its knack for making a good old-fashioned scare fests? Why is it we have to rely on foreign lands to get anything decent and scare-worthy into our theaters? How long are we going to allow Hollywood to fail us like this?

If you have an afternoon to kill, or a dark stormy night with nothing to do... please, please, please, go out and  rent this movie. The Decent is an incredible and brutal horror movie not for the faint of heart, and apparently not good enough for Americans in its current form as the ending has been altered to give it a more happy, fluffy conclusion. I don't know what it is about Americans that make studios think that we can handle a downer ending, but I'm getting pretty well sick of the attitude.