The Descent

 

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A group of women go spelunking, get caved in, and while trying to find another exit come across something much more horrible.

I’m not a big fan of horror movies as I once was, but I don’t know if that is because I have outgrown them or I just like smart horror movies. This one seemed to be along the latter. It isn’t totally brilliant, but it doesn’t fall into the pitfalls of what one might think of a horror movie involving just women.

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The stereotypical all-woman movie would involve the women being flighty, wearing tight outfits, and not being able to take care of themselves, but these women have no issues doing whatever they want. They are all extreme adventure junkies that meet up about once a year for a different activity. The activity this time is caving. Some women in the group of six think that it sounds boring and want something more exciting, but what they find in the Appalachian mountains is far from boring. I know I was scared when I found out they were in the Appalachian mountains, and that was even before they found dueling banjos playing on the radio while switching through stations.

After an early tragedy, the movies slows down a bit, even when they start in through the cave. Then it gets more tense as they move through super tight spots and they haven’t even run into anything creepy yet. Then they do! I jumped quite a bit while watching it. I didn’t find it super creepy, but the jumping quality made it pretty fun to watch. The women did know how to defend themselves and it gets quite bloody. There is even a little bit of character development going on between all the craziness in the cave. It was pretty generalized, but at least something was there for about four of the six women. The other two, I couldn’t tell apart from the rest of them, but that’s isn’t rare for a horror movie.

We watched it on cable, so we got to see the American ending, which is slightly more upbeat than the original UK ending. I have read about the UK ending, and I think I would have liked that one better. There is much debate on what really happened in the American ending, but can’t really discuss that unless you have seen it.

Rating: B+

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