Ponty is back with another great movie review, this week featuring the claustrophobic thriller of 2005’s The Descent.  The film explores the tension of being trapped in the dark with something sinister and lethal—a core human fear.

When I was a kid, we took a big trip to the mountains to visit my great-grandmother in the mountains of western Virginia.  On that trip we visited Mammoth Cave, a large cave system in Kentucky, and I believe Bat Cave in North Carolina as well (I could very well be conflating multiple trips into one in my mind).  At one point on a guided tour of the caves, deep underground (we took an elevator to descend into the chamber), the tour guide turned off the lights in the cavern.  The darkness was so total, so complete, it was unlike anything I had ever experienced before.  I think I instinctively moved closer to my family so I at least had some sense of security.

That experience very much captures, albeit in a very safe, tame, and controlled manner, what this flick feels like to watch.  We take it for granted that, even in the dead of night, there’s usually some source of light:  the moon, a cellphone, an alarm clock, the soft green of a charger indicating it’s doing its job.  Total blackness—complete darkness—is something truly unsettling.

Ponder that as you enjoy Ponty’s review of The Descent (2005):

First off, I’ll offer a short apology. It’s been some time since I watched this movie so this review is being written purely from memory. Though, in essence, a great movie will be, by all accounts, memorable, and so it is with this one. I do intend to return to it, maybe in a better setting – great canvas stretched out across the trees of a spooky forest, pitch dark, getting ready to high tail it back into the warmth and light whenever a twig breaks and triggers a brown trousers alert – but for now, let me bring you into the nightmare that is The Descent (2005).

A group of young daredevil women decide to go spelunking. As with any good horror, all starts off well. They’re getting on, they’re well prepared; but then, inexplicably, they get lost in the caves. Worst of all, they find out they are not alone, and desperate, panicked and pursued, they must find their way back to the surface before they’re caught or trapped for good.

If you’re claustrophobic, this film will really heighten that. Neil Marshall uses the light and dark, key in any good horror, to great effect, tightening his shots when the tension rises but giving the audience the scope to highlight how impressive this world beneath our feet really is. I’m not as claustrophobic as I used to be, but this film really tests that. Even during the early parts, when they’re abseiling down into the cave, you know that every step and every turn is going to lead them somewhere smaller, somewhere tighter, and that a wrong step could mean having to remember directions in an almost pitch black environment, hoping against hope that their torch doesn’t die on them or that there are no surprises in store. But that’s the rub. There are.

The Descent offers a script and a cast that reflect the horror of their predicament, the tensions rising with each passing moment, and when the secondary element is introduced, the girls scatter, each one scraping and fighting to earn their own survival in a situation that appears to be hopeless. And that’s what this film does so well. It brings in the audience to the point that we feel their desperation, their disorientation, their fear. We crawl through every tunnel, we fall perfectly silent when we don’t want to give our position away, we view that tiny bit of sunlight with renewed hope but a very real and present terror. The last time Tina and I watched this movie, we found ourselves whispering to each other during sections of this movie – that’s the effect of a great film.

What was that inscription above the gates of Hell in Dante’s Inferno? ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enters here.’ If that’d been above that cave, those girls would never have gone down there and we’d have missed out on a superb, edge of your seat horror. As it was, we got an experience. And you will too.