It frightened the fuck out of me.
I watched it in a fairly rambunctous theatre… I was pretty pissed off, thinking that the rowdy crowd were going to spoil all the tension, ruin the movie. Damn kids, should you lot even be in an 18 rated movie? Ten minutes in, a few good scares, there wasnt a peep. Everybody in the theatre shut the fuck up. The only sound people made were screams, ACTUAL SCREAMS, not little omygod yelps.
Sure, the springloaded cat shocks are old school, but I’ve seldom seen one as effective as when [spoiler] The creature appears behind one of the girls, viewed through the cold green glare of a camcorder, then gets his bite on, in style [spoiler/]
People FLED from the cinema.
I saw this last year, and don’t remember it too well. I do remember being mightily impressed by it, though.
I’m quite jaded when it comes to the horror genre.
The Descent is a scary, scary movie.
I liked it quite a lot. As things-that-go-bump-in-the-dark films go, this was handled much better than most, making very effective use of believable lighting and cave topography. Honestly, when was the last time you saw a film take full advantage of having most of the screen be completely black? This has a remarkable effect in a theater that will be dramatically lost on the small screen.
I also liked that, aside from Juno’s deception about the cave, nobody did anything overtly stupid. More resourceful and brave than I know I would have been in a similar pickle, I think what really got to me was that they were in a genuinely hopeless situation and even doing the smartest, most alert things, they still had very little chance of survival. Too many horror films rely on a key idiocy as a contrivance to keep the tension going. The Descent never resorts to this.
I didn’t like the hyper-rapid cutting that’s become all too common, but the performances were fine, the dialogue managed to be functional without reverting to stupidity, and the monsters were scary (and more than just in a Jump-Boo! way).
As for the different endings, I have to say I prefer the US one. Why?Because I hate bullshit It-was-all-in-her-head/None-of-it-really-happened endings that have become such cliches in the genre. I think the fact that she’ll be haunted by her murder of Juno, the mercy killing of Beth, the confontations with these horrible beasts, and a future that will be completely submerged in psychosis is far more horrifying than She Never Gets Out. Just because she lives doesn’t make it a happy ending. Far from it.