The Descent

Traumatizing terror serves as the ultimate right to passage for surviving the horrors of the real world in British writer/director Neil Marshall’s ("Dog Soldiers") gory and cathartic horror film about a group of six women adventurers on a doomed spelunking journey. After years of annual adventure trips with her two fellow female daredevils Juno and Beth, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) loses her husband and daughter in a horrifying car accident. One-year later Sarah’s friends arrange a caving expedition, with the addition of three more adventurers, deep in the Appalachian Mountains to help break Sarah out of her depression via a literal form of submersion therapy. The group leader Juno (Natalie Mendoza - "Moulin Rouge") plans the excursion to be especially challenging by surreptitiously choosing a previously unexplored cave for the six women to test the limits of their fears. Juno’s ambitious deceit backfires when the group is trapped by a rockslide that blocks their exit. Escaping the claustrophobic confines of the vast cave becomes more desperate when a clan of blind flesh-eating creatures stalk the women.

Rated R. 99 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)