I'm going to go out on a limb here, and boldly say this: The Descent was one of the best horror movies I've ever seen. You know, I watch a lot of horror movies, probably way too many for my own good. I say that because with each new movie I see, my expectations are lowered more and more due to the fact that each new one sucks worse than the last - until last night when Jen and I went to see The Descent.

The Descent did 2 things for me: One, it reinstilled my faith in the genre; and two, further solidified my feeling that Americans make shit horror movies these days. Maybe we feel a responsibility to not go "too far", or maybe we just suck at it altogether, but Europe and Japan just rock it out. Plus, they're not afraid to kill kids. There may be one exception, Rob Zombie, but he's still got some time to prove himself.

I don't want to be a spoiler for the movie, so I won't give that much away. Pit of Horror dot com had a really good synopsis of the movie, so I'll just borrow theirs:

The plot is this. A group of young women go on a caving expedition. The story is predominantly centred around Shauna MacDonald’s character, 'Sarah'. Who has recently lost her husband and daughter in a terrible car accident. The trip was planned to reunite the friends with a view to help Sarah bring some enjoyment back into her life after all that she had been through.

Suffice to say, the expedition goes horribly wrong.

All the girls except for Juno (Natalie Mendoza) think they are in a known cave that has been explored before, but it turns out that Juno has taken them to a new cave, one that is very unexplored, or at least not recorded in any books. Juno wants them to mark this as their exploration, their accomplishment.

Inevitably it is Juno’s selfish and irresponsible behaviour that envelopes the group in a prodigious tomb of absolute terror, with no escape after a passage they scrape through caves in, almost trapping and killing two members of the group (incidently Sarah and her best friend Beth, played by Alex Reid). Subsequently vital climbing gear is lost in the terrifying fracas which can never be a good thing. This scene in particular is breathtakingly claustrophobic and memorable.

Up to this point director, Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers) methodically builds an absolute atmosphere of foreboding, suspense and anxiety, but the movie eventually steps up a gear; the pace becomes startling. It is not one of those films that you sit ‘twiddling your thumbs’ throughout. It grips you.

Initially there is the real first hand danger of the climbing and caving itself. Most notably when a complex and dangerous manoeuvre across a huge drop has to be undertaken. As mentioned above, vital climbing gear had been lost in the cave-in, making matters much worse. This is when a real sense of vulnerability starts creeping in. And unfortunately there is more to this cave than the girls realise, and if they thought things couldn't possibly get worse, they do... get, much, much worse...

I will say that the movie had just about everything. It had a great story, a great cast of unknowns (at least to Americans), great plot, and great relationship tension. What it excelled at was the good stuff. The suspense, the gore, the drama, the monsters, and the ending... all brilliant. Overall, this movie was scary as hell. For someone who can watch horror movies by themselves, at night, while it's raining, then go directly to sleep - having to stay up for a few hours reading before bed to get my mind off the movie was spectacular.