No conversation revolving around the finest creature features, or perhaps even the greatest horror movies in general, to emerge throughout the 21st Century is complete without mentioning Neil Marshall’s The Descent.
A claustrophobic nightmare brought to nail-biting life, the director further entrenched himself as the genre’s hottest new talent by comfortably surpassing his previous feature Dog Soldiers, with the tale of a spelunking expedition gone horribly wrong becoming a certifiable critical and commercial phenomenon.
On a budget of roughly $4 million, The Descent would scratch and claw its way to almost $60 million at the box office, before enjoying a long-lasting second life on home video and latterly streaming. On top of that, an 86 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 76 percent user rating hammers home the fact audiences were in the presence of terrifying greatness.
And yet, one solitary Redditor has emerged from the woodwork to blast The Descent for a strange and highly specific reason. Unfathomably, the poster in question is adamant that the film was ruined when it was revealed to be a subterranean monster mash, even though that’s the basis on which the entire premise and back half of the narrative rest.
Sure enough, the various comments and replies don’t seem to understand the point trying to be made, when otherwise The Descent would be a cave-diving story and nothing more. While there’s admittedly support behind the notion of the atmosphere and tension being just as thick if there weren’t bloodthirsty mutants involved, it’d be a completely different (and arguably much less popular) flick if there didn’t turn out to be a monstrous twist at the midway point.
Published: Nov 7, 2022 04:31 am