Tuesday, October 12, 2010

'The Descent' is 'The Jaws' of cave exploring

Day before yesterday, I scratched another Saturn Award winner for Best Horror Movie off of my list and this time it was the 2006 winner, “The Descent.”

Directed by Neil Marshall, this British film was released in the United States in April 2006. The movie featured an almost entire female cast and starred Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, MyAnna Buring and Nora Jane Noone.

The movie posted gross revenues of around $4.2 million and spawned a sequel called “The Descent Part 2.” According to the Internet Movie Database, bombings in London during the week of the movie’s U.K. release affected its box office performance.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, it’s about six athletic, thrill-seeking women who decided to go caving in North Carolina. They eventually become trapped in an unmapped cave. It won’t be long before their flashlight batteries run out and to make matters worse, they soon learn that they’re not alone. Before all is said and done, they find themselves face to face with a colony of flesh-eating almost-human creatures that have adapted to life in the dark cave.

For those of you who have seen the movie, you may be surprised to learn that there are multiple endings to the film. If you watched the theatrical release, you get one ending, but if you rent the unrated DVD release of the film, you get the original ending that UK audiences saw. To keep from ruining it for you, I won’t go into any more detail about the endings, but you might want to watch the unrated version if you’re a fan of the movie.

In the end, I enjoyed rewatching this movie. It’s far more creepy than other Saturn Award winners, and it definitely qualifies as a first rate horror film. From here, it’s on to the 2007 winner, “Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”

No comments:

Post a Comment