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We got a droolingly positive review for Neil Marshall's THE DESCENT!!!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at Neil Marshall's follow-up to DOG SOLDIERS, another low-budget creeper called THE DESCENT. I really dig the trailer for the flick and the below review gets me amped to see the movie! I geniunely love DOG SOLDIERS and I can't wait to see where Marshall goes as a director! Here's the review!
Dear Harry,
Hello, I just got back from an advance preview screening of Neil Marshall's
new horror film 'The Descent'. his last film 'Dog Soldiers' was (in my
mind) a crazy great fresh kick in the teeth, but if this new film kicked
anything it was my bollocks, and it kicked them so far up into my body I
could do a great Brando Godfather impression.
The screening wasn't all that far in advance (the film opens wide in the UK
on Friday), but it was shown at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh by the crew from
the Dead By Dawn horror film festival. The film was apparently meant to be
shown in the festival back in April but Marshall didn't have it ready by
then so he only showed a trailer. The director of the festival introduced
the film telling us Marshall couldn't make the screening as he was knocking
back warm beers down south in London. Oh well...
'The Descent' is a caving film, with 6 women going underground. One of them
lost her husband and daughter a year earlier, as witnessed by two of the
others (and us - ouch). This trip is a chance for our heroine to show
strength and solidarity. We are introduced to the other women, including two
sisters, and a lovely Irish girl with a penchant for extreme sports (who
takes the piss out of caving a fair bit until things turn bad).
After a leisurely introduction to the caves our ladies get stuck, with no
option but to continue into the darkness. I was lucky enough to know
bugger-all about the film going into it, so I was right alongside the
cavers, venturing into the unknown, and all the better for it. Fairly soon
the film introduces the 'crawlers' (well they're never named, but credited
as crawlers in the credits). We don't see too much of them straight away.
This is A Good Thing, not because of cheap creature design, but Less Is More
as we all know.
I don't want to spoil the film's plot from now on. This is the premise, and
the film is a tightly paced horror film that relies on its great action
sequences and tense set-ups. We're not watching an epic film here, though
the first glimpse of a crawler is surprisingly like our first glimpse of
Gollum in Peter Jackson's epic.
'The Descent' managed to keep me feeling physically tense for pretty much
most of its running time, something I haven't felt since watching Blair
Witch for the first time and being totally suckered into the hype (well I
was younger then). There's plenty (and I do mean PLENTY) of BANG! horror
jump-scares, but even though you can see a lot of them coming from a mile
away, every single one worked a treat on me! I love getting into a horror
film and letting yourself get scared, and I was able to do so very easily in
this film.
But it's not all jump-scares. There are so many tense build-ups in the film,
and not all of them lead to a jump-scare. Marshall clearly knows his shit
with horror films, and has great fun teasing the audience. There's a
fantastic little sequence where we see a narrow pathway that does a u-turn
on itself. We only see one side of the path at a time. The two sisters are
creeping along, the older one moving first. The camera follows her to peek
around the corner to check the coast is clear, then back as she tells her
sister that it is. Then still in the same shot we follow the younger sister
round the corner as she moves onward, then back again to the older sister as
she prepares to follow, and finally round again as she joins her younger
sister. Each time the camera moves along the black face of rock between the
two areas I was covering my face in my hands, totally convinced that This
would be the next big jump-scare, only to be denied by Marshall, and then
made even more tense as I awaited the next possible reveal. So much fun!
There are simply loads of moments like this, where the camera moves slowly
but surely around a dark cave, and you just KNOW that something is lurking
in the black, ready to scare the crap out of you. One of the women has a
video camera, with a handy night-vision function. This comes in very useful
for some not-very-original but very-well-executed "what's over there in the
dark?" shots.
Another aspect of the film that I loved was how harsh it is. I think every
great horror film should have at least one truly harsh moment; one that is
just so unfair on the character onscreen (and thereby the audience). We get
our first one when the crawlers make their first attack, and one of the
girls (Juno) is getting severely amped up and just a little bit psycho. She
made at least half the audience tonight cry out at the unfairness of it all!
Later our heroine (the widow Sarah) gets properly stuck into a fight with a
crawler or two in a big pool of bloody water. This fight sequence is just
f***ing great, and it looks absolutely beautiful. Again, nothing startlingly
original about characters fighting each other covered in blood, but the deep
red of the gore captured onscreen just highlights the gritty harshness of
the fight sequence.
Oh yes, the blood. 'The Descent' has some top quality gore and blood. Sean
Pertwee's struggle with a little pooch in 'Dog Soldiers' should prepare you
for what's to come in this flick. There's nothing too showy about it; no
geysers of blood spraying everyone in sight for example; but what you see is
violent, red, messy and perfectly suited to the tone of the film. One of the
girls' breaks a leg, which pleasingly turned half the audience's faces away.
SPOILER IN THIS PARAGRAPH (well a small one)
You may notice that I've only named one of the women so far. Well the
individual characters are not the film's strongpoint. There are 6 women who
go down into the caves, and two of them I could care less for. There's
Sarah, our heroine the widow, her mate Beth from home (a thankless role, but
gets the audience's sympathy for being so nice), Juno who seems to have a
lot to prove (and was having an affiar with Sarah's husband - ooh, juicy!),
the Irish girl whose name I've already forgotten, but she's a fun character
with quite a few jokes in her, and the two sisters, who I suspect were there
as Trek-style Red Sweaters. The main 4 are competent in their roles, but
it's really Sarah and Juno who stand out.
SPOILER OVER
I don't want to tell too much, but it's ok to let you know that Sarah does
go f***ing mental. She transforms into a f***ing terminator, kicking serious
f***ing ass and thoroughly justifying the amount of swearing in this
paragraph. A lot of movies have the lead "go terminator" without rhyme nor
reason, but Sarah's progression is believable and fits the film perfectly.
Neil Marshall has crafted an extremely solid horror film in 'The Descent'.
It doesn't feature anything particularly original, but it's not a rip-off or
anything. It feels very tight, very well made by a bunch of people who
clearly know horror. They give you just the right amount of moments to
breath and let out a little wry laugh, before coaxing you back into an
uncomfortably tense sequence. Speaking of which, this film has the best shot
claustrophobia sequence I've ever seen on film, as one of the women gets
stuck crawling through a tight tunnel early on in the film. Very
uncomfortable to watch.
The showing was apparently supposed to be held in a room with a larger
screen, but something broke down, and rather than show it on a large screen
in mono, they showed it to us on a smaller screen with full surround sound,
and I am very thankful for that! The sound design in this film deserves a
special mention, for capturing the tension. Nothing is rammed down your
throat, but I was constantly feeling uneasy at the sounds coming from all
around, especially when the crawlers make their distinctive noises. Again,
nothing too wowing, but noticably of a high quality, and always put to good
use. I liked the score too, with its steadily building crescendos, getting
increasingly atonal, messed up and freaky.
Ah, I nearly forgot. The crawlers. Well, this wasn't a big budget film, but
the crawlers are just cool creatures. They obviously had a lot of thought
put into them, and as such they make sense in the setting of the film. They
don't have a stand-out feature that screams cool (like the reapers' maws in
Blade II for example), but they're creepy enough to help make the action and
tension sequences more effective. They did however remind me alot of another
recent British horror film Creep (which I saw last night - meh).
I really liked this film (as if you couldn't tell). It's a refreshingly
harsh film that pulls no punches, and gives an audience who knows their
horror plenty to enjoy. Thanks to the Filmhouse and Dead By Dawn for showing
it to us early!
Thanks Harry, I really do reccommend this film to you! It's satisfying to
know there are people like Neil Marshall out there who get horror and can
put out refreshingly well made films that reconfirm your belief in the
genre, especially when Resident Evil 3, Scary Movie 4, and whatever
bollocksed-up American remakes of generic Asian horror films featuring
ghosts of little girls with long black hair are on the horizon. Also nice to
know it's all British (cast, crew, locations and money), when not much gets
the chance to get made here.
If you use this, call me Rick James. It really is my name.
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+ Expand All
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wow the closest to first I've ever gotten. WOOOHOO. Bring back the ROTS talkbacks!
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have not seen it yet but sounds great especially with the gore. beautiful ladies in emergency situations .. and gore. can't wait.
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Jul 07, 2005 4:38:03 AM CDT
Fanb0y, I agree. We never had our revenge on MinasTirithII, or C
by krullboy
as Darth Maul says in TPM, "At last we will have our revenge".
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P. L. A. N. T.
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Thank God, because I believe few people have the gag reflex control abilities as well as Tracy Lords, Paris Hilton, Eliza Dushku. . .and Janet Reno
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Jul 07, 2005 4:44:56 AM CDT
Does anyone else think a movie about a group of women crawling a
by krullboy
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http://tinyurl.com/d7lkf
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Read his novel, The Descent. It's pretty fucking obvious they've ripped off his novel.
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this could be the best horror film in years. the concept is so original, and it sounds fucking terryfying. weve not had a claustrophobic film like this, done proper, in a long while, with realism and all that. i reckon itll be the next blair witch, but will also stand the test of time, and be a really big hit world wide. just hope u yanks dont decide to do a focking remake of it next year with sara michelle gellar.
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Day after we get the Olympics, Coincidence? I think not.
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The werewolves were piss poor. Low budget not withstanding. They were like a load of dance students-performance artists in furs.
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Sorry, but I thought this film was something of a stinker. Bad script, no characterisation.
The makers seemed to think loud noises, not anything actually disturbing, were scary.
Still, got a free bar and a free 'The Descent' pocket Maglite. -
I work near russell square. I can't believe it. My friends are stuck there. The internet is down pretty much everywhere and mobile phone networks are going down all the time, I think this is to stop more detonations. I've seen a lot well wishers on here, so from a Londoner and a Brit. Thank you very much. We'll pull through, we always do.
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had a decent premise (Hell IS down there!) but like all his novels, the basic idea kicks ass, the execution a little less so. If this Descent is even minorly like his, I hope someone else wrote it
His Year Zero (plague emerging from opening a thousand year old relic forcing govts to clone saints from other relics looking for someone with resistance and then getting jesus) had a great premise. However, the telling was just mundane.
And the last one just sucked. -
...this twat Marshall and one "Long, Jeff" - a scum that rewrote their works to excrete an unreadable, laughable pseudonovel by the same title.
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My review for "Attack Of The Big Gollums": Im AMAZED at the positive reaction this film is getting, I'm a projectionist and watched it on Tuesday... I also saw the Empire 5 star review so was really looking forward to it. Basically, its starts off as OK 3 star entertainment, as the women go pot holing... its claustrophobic.. and then, the monsters turn up, or should i say the Big Gollums turn up. Contrary to what the reviewer says, this film is all about jump-scares of the cheapest kind, and various choppily edited scenes of the women rolling around fighting Big Gollums. Its the cinematic equiivalent of turning the lights off and going BOO! you know EXACTLY when every scare is coming. And I swear, if i see another horror film where in a tense moment the main character turns around and BOOM! BIG SCARE: THEIR FRIEND IS RIGHT BEHIND THEM.... Im going to turn into a Big Gollum and start killing people, because that is the cheapest trick in the book. The way they try to turn one of the women into an iconic tough action female, by suddenly having her covered in blood and STARING, LOOKING MEAN, UPPER LIP QUIVERING... is utterly transparent and not earned. Its just one big rip off. Obviously I hated it, but I can understand some people liking it... BUT NOBODY should go in expecting a 5 star film. You've seen this all done better a hundred times before.
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The Americans have already got a descent type movie coming out called the cave, looks all flash and no substance, not a patch on the descent trailer
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The Cave looks like the biggest piece of shit going. "Now, a team of expert cave explorers..." There hasn't been a line that absurd since "Now, the best deep-core drillers in the world..." Give me a break. "Beneath heaven lies hell...beneath hell lies...THE CAVE...beneath The Cave lies the quality of this piece of ass."-----------------------------------
http://www.intrepidmedia.com/column.asp?id=2146 -
I thought that while "Year Zero" definitly fell apart midway through, Long's "The Descent" was quality throughout. It'd be hard to make it into a film though. At least, a good one.
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... would still be The Cave, Pitch Black or Aliens... *YAWN*
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....is there a mutant rape scene? Copious, casual tits on display? With that set-up, there goddamn well better be.
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If this film is just a long stream of boo scares can it really be a good horror film??
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I love how incredibly British this review sounds.
Oh, Graphix67: This is an adaptation of the novel, right? Which predates The Cave and Pitch Black and, frankly, didn't resemble them very much. -
Wow, sounds like a true masterpiece!
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If by that you mean Jeff Long's THE DESCENT then no, it isn't. Same title, some minor similarities (creatures underground) but otherwise totally different.
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particularly when the cow fell into the campsite. Now that's fun. I'll certainly give this film the benefit of the doubt, particularly when the folks attacking it are also on record clamoring for "quality" like Revenge of the Sith. Shouldn't you be busy retroactively updating your toy collections in keeping with the Lucas Revisionism Department, like sticking new heads onto your Boba Fett figures or chiseling new wrinkles into your ROTJ Emperor?
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This sounds like a good movie with some quality scares, but I hope it isn't saddled with a PG-13 rating. I'm so tired at looking at fillms that are supposed to be gut-ridden scary (Boogeyman, Dark Water, Cursed) and they are saddled with a PG-13 rating. Spielberg's movie should, SHOULD have been an R by a lot of violence and intense imagery (Little Dakota screaming "Was it the terroritst
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flicking through telly stations from the news to the smiths on mtv; krshh... widespread reports of krshh... panic on the streets of london krshh...
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