Thursday, October 15, 2009

31 days of Halloween: The Descent

The Descent is a 2005 British horror film directed by Neil Marshall.

Life has not been good to Sarah. On a trip back from a whitewater rafting trip, her husband and young daughter are killed in an auto accident. Sarah is in the hospital for weeks, and is traumatized. Juno, a friend of Sarah tries to get all their friends together to relax, unwind, and move on. Her plan is to hike a cave in the Appalachian mountains. All the plans have been set up, they're ready for their adventure.

They arrive to the cave, which doesn't quite look like the one in their itineraries, but they trek on down. They find some wondrous sights, and keep tunneling deeper and deeper. Soon they are trapped by an unfortunate cave-in (a scene that really freaked me out). After the other girls take another look and assess where they're at - they realize that Juno has taken them into an unexplored cave system. With no one knowing where they're at - they must go forward. But strange things are lurking in the dark. Are they just imagining the walls moving, or is something there?

I was lucky enough to see this film in the theaters (one of literally a handful that I know I've seen in the theaters) and boy - what a rush. The film on the big screen is not for the faint of heart. It is extremely claustrophobic and when the girls come across the residents of the cave, well. All Hell breaks loose.

What's interesting is that the film was not shot in a cave at all.


*** 1/2 out of *****

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