Eye Candy #456 - "The Descent"

The Descent: Six young women going caving in a here-to-fore unexplored cave system in the Appalachian mountains. One of the group, Sarah, suffered a horrible tragedy, losing both her husband and daughter in a fairly horrific car accident (metal poles being shot through bodies and such), so this trip is a bit of a chick-healing thingee to help her out.  Now some of the group has been caving before, including Juno, the lone American and the one who found the cave system. The problem is Juno lied about which cave system they were in and one cave-in later, the women are trying to find their way out of the cave system to daylight with no hope of rescue since no one knows where they are. But that isn’t their only problem – the cave is populated by albino cave “crawlers”, mutant human-looking creatures with sharp teeth that track by sound like bats. So now the ladies have to get out of the cave system while avoiding creatures that want to kill and eat them. Mayhem ensues.  The main reason I wanted to see the movie is the concept: I read a book several years back called “The Descent” by Jeff Long, about the world discovering huge underground cave systems populated by albino humanoids that gave rise to the ideas of devils and demons from the netherworld. The creatures had cities and established cultures, and lived sometimes dozens of miles beneath the earth. They also kidnapped ordinary humans to increase their own population. It’s a fairly expansive book, part sci-fi, part horror (and an excellent read, by the by), and from looking at the previews and now watching the film, it does share some similarities with it (specifically the albino “crawlers” that attack people and the title). The movie however lacks the scope that the book had (there is nothing global about the story of six woman cavers, obviously), and that was a bit of a letdown, mostly because I would like to see someone have a go at the story of the novel. Truth be told, I have no idea if the Long book was even used as a source for the script, but the similarities are there and they are close and if I was Long, I’d probably be calling my lawyers.  The film is well-made, the cast does well, and the action moves along briskly. In fact, as a horror movie it’s just fine, probably better than average. It was also directed by Neil Marshall, who directed one of my other favorite horror movies, “Dog Soldiers” (and though I bought that one, I won’t be buying this one). It did seem to lack the sense of humor that “Dog Soldiers” had, but maybe no one can make a straight werewolf movie, I don’t know.  Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”