Written and Directed by
Neil Marshall
Cast
Shauna Macdonald ………. Sarah
Natalie Mendoza ………. Juno
Alex Reid ………. Beth
Saskia Mulder ………. Rebecca
MyAnna Buring ………. Sam
Nora-Jane Noone ………. Holly
Oliver Milburn ……… Paul
Molly Kayll ………. Jessica
Craig Conway ………. Crawler – Scar
DVD Release Date: December 26, 2006
Running Time: 99 minutes
Unrated
The Movie
Cult hero Neil “Dog Soldiers” Marshall brings us The Descent, the third spelunking horror movie DVD reviewed by yours truly, ML Kennedy. I’m not really sure how that became my specialty, but like the Dudley Boys in a table match, I usually lose.
This film is easily the best of the three aforementioned caving movies, although that distinction is akin to being the valedictorian of summer school. Six adventurous British chicks (one with a dead kid, her close friend, a doctor in training, the doctor’s sister, a spiky haired rebel, and a wily Filipino) decide to explore a dangerous cave in the Appalachians. As always happens in the film world, their entrance gets blocked, and they most spelunk the heretofore unspelunked. As they descend deeper underground, they eventually discover some cave drawings of rhinos (as we all know, indigenous to America’s Bible Belt), and run into some monsters that kind of look like the unloved love child of Max Shrek and Gollum. The monsters also make this weird clicking sound, somewhere between a purr and the sound of a Big Wheels going down a steep hill. The crawlers, as the are called in the credits, seem to subsist on a diet of campers and German Shepherds. Despite this rather limited fare, the creeper community appears quite large and thriving. Huh.
The Descent starts out as Deliverance as interpreted by the cast of The L Word; our character Juno, as played by Moulin Rouse‘s China Doll, even wears the Burt Reynold’s wetsuit. The second half of the film morphs into an underground Alien where every character is Ripley, and the aliens aren’t very formidable.
As a matter of personal taste, there are far too many fake “shock” moments early in the picture. It is also worth noting that the claustrophobia of the crawling scenes is far scarier than any of the crawler scenes. But all things being equal, it is a competent horror movie, fairly intelligent, refreshingly patient, and featuring moments of brutal reality that rarely make it onto celluloid.
The DVD
This DVD has all a fan of the film could want from a single disc. Included are:
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1 EX), English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Commentary by director Neil Marshall and the crew – in which they discuss such things as “John Carpenter font.”
Commentary by director Neil Marshall and the cast – in which most of the actresses are giggly and talking about the film’s many homages.
“The Descent: Behind the Scenes” – This thing is a 40-minute featurette, which is a hybrid of a promo piece and “making of” special.
“DescENDING” – An Interview with Director Neil Marshall, which consists of his explanation for the various versions of the film’s ending.
Deleted and extended scenes – These include many short bits, mostly related to superfluous scenes of character development.
Outtakes The gag reel is pretty good.
Storyboards
Stills gallery
Cast and crew biographies
