Six women go caving. Six women get trap by a cave-in. Six women discover they are not alone in the dark. Repeat: In the dark.

“The Descent” is one of the better horror films to come along in a long time. It works on quite a few levels. First, you have the relationships between the women. Everything begins good and then the tension starts once the cave-in hits. Secondly is just the fact that they are caving. It’s dark, dank and very claustrophobic down there. The feeling of unease and dread is already pretty damn high before the monsters even make their appearance. When they do (oh, man … it’s pretty cool!) that’s when all all the gore and mayhem starts. Like most other current horror films, the gore factor is pretty high in “The Descent” once it gets there. Those Crawlers are just plain nasty. A woman behind us in the theater kept squealing and gagging all through the end of the movie. Heh.

Who will be strong or lucky enough to make it out? Well, that you just gotta find out for yourself.

Now, here’s the kicker. The version is U.S. theaters has a truncated end. It’s missing the 1 minute continuation that ends the original British version. I really hate that this was done (thanks again, Lionsgate) as the original ending fits so much better with the tone of the film. It also wraps up a plot device that just gets totally dropped in the American version. If you have seen the film and want to check out the original ending, you can thanks to YouTube.

As for complaints about the movie … I have a major one. There is a plot device that pits two of our women against each other. I usually find that a horror film isn’t the greatest venue for that sort of thing. I can’t honestly buy that folks would stop to hash out their differences while being chased by a pack of nasty, flesh-eating cave dwellers. This plot point is a slightly less offensive in light of the original ending but just didn’t work for me as presented in the American version.

Bottom Line:
Definitely worth checking out. It gave me the willies.