British horror THE DESCENT

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romanD
Posts: 806
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2004 4:18 am

British horror THE DESCENT

#1 Post by romanD »

as I have to work right now in London, due to terroristic events, I checked a small british movie out in my rare sparetime. It's called THE DESCENT and it is by the director of DOG SOLDIERS, which was fun, but suffered from its budget. Now I already heard a lot of praise about this movie and it is quite sucessful in the UK, but still, I thought, well it is a cheap british horror movie, how good can it get?
The story is suprisngly pretty much the same as the upcomng THE CAVE: 6 girls take a vacation to forget a horrible accident and go cave-climbing in the mountains. They have their little secrets and such and as the cave collapses and there is no way back soon distrust, hate and psychostuff happens. But on their way further down the cave, looking for another exit, the girls encounter some strange creatures, which like the taste of human blood...

funny enough they showed the trailer for THE CAVE before this and I guess it is really quite the same, with bigger effects and dragonlike flying monsters, but with less plot, less character development and less terror.

THE DESCENT really gives you everything you can hope for in a horror movie.. it starts slow, on a very emotional bang actually, you have enough time to get to know the likeable characters, so that you finally are shocked, enraged and sad when the girls meet their gruesome ends. The caveclimbing scenes are already very scary, so if you are claustrophobic, dont watch this, seriously! But when the creatures appear you are really in one of the scariest movies I have ever seen! Add to that a score by David Julyan, of which I thought he wrote so far only boring slow stuff for movies like INSOMNIA.. here he starts slow and emotional, too, but when it is needed the score gets big and scares you witless. Great score! No CD release so far, unfortunately.

What can I say? this is really the best horror movie for years, simple story, ok, but told in a great way, that flashback stuff pays off amazingly in its final scene, the casting and acting is great, the suspense and horror is almost unbearable, a great score, fantastic camerawork and cool monsters and a lot of gore, I mean A LOT!

I hope this gets its theatrical run in the US it deserves.. Im sure it works only half as good on DVD, as a dark screen and the sound give you in a theater the feel you are in that cave...

just wow...

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