The Descent
Director: Neil Marshall
Writer: Neil Marshall
Cast: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, MyAnna Buring, Nora-Jane Noone

Plot:
A year after a tragic accident in which her husband and daughter died, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) catches up with her girlfriends for a weekend of caving. But as soon as they get down into the cave system, things start to go wrong: a part collapses and blocks them from getting back the way they got in. It turns out that they’re not in the explored caves they thought they were. And there is something in the dark.

The Descent is great – basically the perfect horror film, that just gets the teensiest bit too long towards the end. But it’s tense and scary and pretty damn awesome.

Here are the things I loved about this film: First, the cast is basically all female and they all get different characters and get to be competent on various levels and adventurous and do sports for fun and just be kick-ass. And yes, it is a sad fact that it’s something to get excited about, but it is rare for most films that all the characters have more than one dimension, but particularly when it’s female characters and I loved to get it.

Second, Neil Marshall really knows how to make this movie tense. Yes, he uses a lot of old clichés but he somehow manages to make them scary again. There were a couple of scenes where I was really glad that I was not drinking or eating something at that moment because I might have choked – that’s how hard I jerked.

Third, the camera work was amazing. Especially when it came to the descent and going through the cave: large portions of the screen just remained dark which really managed to transport the claustrophobia.

Four, the crawlers were really gruesome.

With all of those things working so extremely well, I didn’t mind that there was a slight lag in the tension towards the end (which was made up for by the ending anyway that did catch me by surprise, even though it’s not completely new [I’m talking about the Unrated / English ending]) or the very slight inconsistencies in the plot.

Summarising: Must-see for horror fans.