A group of beautiful, big-breasted women make a series of terrible decisions that lead to them getting lost in an uncharted cave system that contains some not so scary monsters.
I knew what the monsters looked like going into The Descent because there are pictures of them on the Wikipedia page. Knowing this, I was afraid that much of the movie's suspense would be lost. As it turns out, the first hour-or-so of the film has no monsters, but instead effectively manifests the environment itself into the antagonistic force, which then produce a very real fear of getting lost. One scene has a character getting stuck between some rocks, and the little shard of claustrophobia I have ignited as I leaned in as much as I could toward the screen in anticipation.
It is these earlier moments that are the strongest bits of The Descent. The horror is entirely psychological, and more importantly, easily relatable. Just last spring I went on a run in the woods and found myself getting lost. What was meant to be a 30 minute run ended up taking more than an hour. The whole time I had to tell myself that I would get out okay. The characters do the same in The Descent. There must be a way out of these caves. The anxiety grows as the group, as well the audience, can't help but question if by going deeper into the cave, are they getting closer to the exit, or going deeper into the labyrinth?
Even as I was watching the film, before the monsters appeared, I began to wonder of the film as a whole would be more frightening if there were no monsters at all. After watching it, I concluded that it indeed would have been.
The first time we get a full look at a "crawler," I did in fact gasp out loud. It was an exhilarating reveal, but once the shock had dissipated the scene quickly developed into a loud action brawl. It was at this point that I lost a chunk of interest in the film. Sure, the women made some stupid decisions to get into their current predicament, but now they continued to make a series of progressively worse ones. The most infuriating is a senseless betrayal that accomplishes nothing, and is only based on rumor. It almost seemed like a commentary on negative stereotypes of women who hold grudges and spread rumors.
The tension established in the first hour goes flying out the window when the monsters appear, and the film quickly develops into a series of jump scares. Most of these jump scares are obnoxiously predictable, but still made me jump a bit, simply because it was a loud noise prefaced by some quiet. It was no longer scary, but instead just plain annoying. The sort of irritation one gets when a kid keeps flicking stuff at the back of your head whenever you turn away from him. Ugh.
At least the jump scares in The Conjuring (2013) were actually scary. The ones in The Descent reminded me of how I felt when I was kid and saw a particular scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) for the first time. Harry has just teleported to Diafdjhgkshfgksfgs-ally via a chimney, and sees some creepy looking hand thing. I knew the hand thing was going to close on him, but it still mad me jump when it happened. That's not good filmmaking, it's just being a nuisance.
Anyway.
The monsters are also pretty easy to kill, so they quickly become unintimidating. One women becomes such a bad ass in her rampage against the crawlers that it felt almost like I was watching a Sam Raimi or Perter Jackson horror film. At this point the film becomes more comedic than anything else.
The Descent is by no means bad. It's just not scary, although plenty of people seem to think that it is. The first half is certainly chilling, but once we see the monster, the film becomes a splatter fest. So if splatter films are what you're looking for, then this will actually be quite satisfying for you. I didn't walk away from this film scared, but I was at least entertained, even with a few annoyances.
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