The Descent

The Descent

It's a good film overall, I recommend it heartily. I really dig zombie/apocalyptic films and this one manages to hit all the notes of a good horror film when it gets into its stride. Which is important to note because the beginning is fairly slow and cliche. The film is both innovative for and suffers from the cast being all female except for one brief moment. And it particularly suffers for the mundane banter the women have early on. Their thick - and drunk - accents doesn't make it any livelier either. Even my wife was annoyed. But it sets the tone and familiarizes the characters in an almost intimate way that is played to good effect later on despite being just an inch deeper than stereotypical card board cut outs of characters. Point in fact, most of the characters had nicknames assigned by us that were easier to identify. ("The lesbian, The schizo, The clueless one", etc)
But that's practically convention with any horror film in addition to guessing who dies first. (My money was wrong on this one -Be careful if you are taking bets.)

We watched it just recently over the XBOX live service (a highly under rated product). It's important to note that the XBOX version of the movie is the original British version as opposed to the American edit, which has a slightly different ending (the American version literally cuts about a minute off the end creating a vastly different fate for one of the characters).
The British version is superior.

And while not many horror films actually make me cringe, there are moments within The Descent when mundane issues fail to act so, and the peril becomes more and more tangible; that I couldn't help but be at unease.