The Descent

Well, it was a matter of time. Batboy has finally got a movie, and he's brought his friends along. Helmed by director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers), The Descent tells the story of an all-female group of friends that run into some problems (of the cannibal kind) during a spelunking expedition.
The characters are realized well enough, even if there's no real depth to them; kudos to the casting director, though, for not including any real bombshell in the group- it must take balls to make a choice like that, but it works wonders in making the movie more immediate. The effects are a mixed bag; Marshall does wonders with a limited budget, but the limitations show through early and often- from a swarm of bats that looks to be hand drawn, to an extremely shoddy cave-in, and more. That being said, the batboys are very well realized and effective, and the gore is both abundant and extremely satisfying.
A sense of dread is successfully maintained through most of the film, particularly in the beginning: a crash scene is handled extremely well, and a few of the cave-exploring parts are fairly harrowing. Paradoxically, once the monsters appear and make their intention clear of butchering and eating the girls, the tension pretty much disappears; it becomes just a matter of who bites it, and how.
The main culprit of that, as always, is the script: one of the most important things survival horror needs, is a sense of fairness, of internal consistency, and unfortunately, there is none to be had here. Someone’s throat might be pierced from side to side and still live hours just to mumble an important plot point, then a minor character might be killed just by popping one of his eyeballs. The monsters might be inhumanly fast and nimble, but they patiently wait until the heroines run away. In my opinion, when script manipulations like these become readily apparent, any tension quickly dissipates- immersion replaced with a vague interest to see how it all plays out. Some attention is given to how the relationships in the group are affected by the ordeal, but as the characters are fairly underwritten, not much is made out of it either.
The descent, then, is worth watching, but quickly forgettable. A lot more could have been made of it, either by giving its characters more depth, giving more thought to the second half, or giving it a sense of humor. Mean spiritedness and buckets of blood carry it a long way, but in the end, it’s just a smart-ish slasher movie… disappointing, given the obvious talent driving it.