# 4: The Descent

(Above: a mothafuckin' CHUD, but not a mothafuckin' CHUD from "The Descent." Those are way scarier)



The torture-fication of American horror films has been an interesting development over the past five years. Other than remakes of j-horror films and sequels to remakes of j-horror films, it seems that every American horror film made this decade has been a remake of a 70s grindhouse horror movie (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes) or an original (the Saw franchise, Hostel) united by a common thread: an extreme focus on the infliction of physical pain on young stars of shows on the CW network. These films are not without merit, and they raise questions about the cultural zeitgeist that could fuel more than a handful of post-graduate theses, but they universally suffer from a glaring deficiency: THEY AREN'T SCARY.

These movies do manage to prove a physical reaction in the audience: they make you squirm. But making an audience squirm is probably the easiest thing to do in film. Simply set up a two-shot of a couple of people, one tied to a chair, the other holding a pair of hedge clippers, slice off some latex fingers and ears, splash some Karo syrup around, and if the effect is realistic enough, it'll get the job done. Scaring an audience on the other hand, making them feel gooseflesh rise on their arms, making them nauseous with the question what's next? and having them leave the theater with nightmares waiting to hatch in their skulls, that's a tall order. That kind of effect is achieved only through a complex alchemy of film elements that is intensly rare. That's why I'm giving some mad-ass props to The Descent for being the down-right scariest film I've probably ever seen in a theater.

The filmmaker, a limey named Neil Marshall, gets his mojo from a dynamite setting (a West Virginia cave system), characters well-sketched enough to be distingushable, and a third-act villian (Mothafuckin' C.H.U.D.s!) that build off of each other on a pitch-perfect escalation of tension. The nausea, forboding and fear start creeping up on you long before the CHUDS show up, especially if, like me, you're a touch claustraphobic. The protagonists, a bunch of female spelunkers, get lost in an unnavigatable labyrinth, forced to flail around for exits with little sense of where they are at any given moment. The fear of the characters seeps into the audience, the intra-personal tension builds, the question of what the fuck is going to happen? becomes more and more pressing, until the CHUDS show up, and the rubber band of escalating anxiety snaps in a disorienting thrash of blood, teeth, and CHUD-killing. There are whole sequences towards the end of the film when it would be perfectly understandable to forget to breath for minutes at a time.

The physical and emotional effect of seeing The Descent is compounded by how rare that sort of filmgoing experience is when it comes to horror films. And for that reason, The Descent merits a mighty huzzah and kudos.

Score: 9.3