The Descent
The Descent – currently in post-production with an intended release date of July 29th – is Neil Marshall’s follow-up to the excellent Dog Soldiers. The following is quoted from someone who has recently seen the rough-cut.
The Descent is the story of six women who have had a year off from their usual habit of doing slightly mad outdoors things, following an accident that left one of their party out of the loop for a while. Their first trip out once reunited is to go caving in some pretty part of the States. Only, the cave isn’t as empty as it could be, and it soon becomes apparent that what goes in may not necessarily come back out.
All the elements that made Dog Soldiers superb are in place again – it’s an excellent ensemble cast, the humour is spot-on, there’s genuine time and care taken over character development, the story is welll-paced and unfolds at a realistic speed. When the stalking does turn into slashing, it’s intense and visceral, and the second half of the movie – having drawn you in and made you like these people – will just grab you by the throat and not let go. There does come a point near the end when you just don’t want it to stop, because movies this good don’t happen to the genre as often as they should.
It shows on screen that Neil Marshall is not only a horror fan but also a genuinely talented story-teller and film-maker. There are references to all sorts of films in The Descent – Deliverance, Carrie, The Shining, Apocalypse Now, Alien, Evil Dead.
The Descent rocks. It will seriously mess with your head if you are claustrophobic. It’s intelligent, intense, fun and gory, genuinely engrossing and at times deeply unpleasant. Just the nicest thing I can say about a horror flick!
1 comment Sunday 03 Apr 2005 | Paul | New and Upcoming Films
i thought this movie rocked…from what i saw of it (was hidden behnd my jacket for most of it it was that scarey) lol…will deffo buy this when it comes out (mainly to watch the bits i was too scared to watch hehe!) but yeah great film!!