The Descent (2005)

I'll say this for British horror film The Descent - it works. Director Neil Marshall's second film preys on claustrophobia (fear of tight spaces), nyctophobia (fear of the dark), and scopophilia (a form of voyeuristic pleasure).

Unfortunately, that's about it.

If I had to sum up The Descent in five easy words, it'd go something like this: mutant cavedwellers attack sexy spelunkers. More specifically, the film follows six thrill-seeking women who decide to explore an undiscovered cave a year after one of them, Sarah, loses her husband and daughter in a horrific car crash (the first great jump moment of the movie). After they realize the cave is more difficult to navigate than they anticipated, the women also realize that they are not alone...

If this sounds like the plot of every horror movie ever, it's because The Descent unfortunately suffers from being overly formulaic. In classic form, the first act of the film introduces the characters to us, yet the real action doesn't start until they enter the cave. A few combat scenes and deaths later, the film closes with the "one last scare" that Wes Craven's Scream so strikingly highlighted - and parodied.

The performances all fall into the same tropes that horror films encourage - the blonde protagonist, her spunky best friend, the older sister protecting her rebellious younger sister, &c. And the monsters are mind-numbingly mindless, not even that terrifying to behold.

Why, then, does the film work?

A lot of it has to do with Marshall's deft direction and perverse mastery of basic human fears. Perhaps the tropes of moviedom help Marshall here; we can just feel when a jump moment is coming, yet the anticipation almost makes the event worse. Take for example the scene where sisters Sam and Rebecca are fleeing the creatures and come to an abrupt turn in the caverns - the direction is such that we can only see one of the two corridors at a time. The camera rounds the corner, swings back, back again, back again, so that by the time a creature lunges at the sisters, it's been built up in our heads so much that the jump is amplified tenfold.

Something must be said, too, for the film's setting - a dark and unfamiliar underground network of caves. The characters are out of their element, as are the viewers. Marshall successfully instills a claustrophobia with his visuals that most directors can only dream of. And of course the shaky camerawork during fights with the creatures take the style of Greengrass's Bourne trilogy to a bloody new high.

Would I have liked the film if I hadn't watched it at midnight, with all the lights off (even the streetlights)? Probably not. But if you're looking to have the bejeepers scared out of you, I can't think of a better flick than The Descent.