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July 17, 2006

Comments

Right on

Shame that your off-base review has to lessen the RT rating. This movie was SCARY, well-done & well deserving a higher grade than given.

Leo,

Why is it a shame that my review lessens the film's rating on Rotten Tomatoes? The film (as of August 3rd) has a 90% positive rating - isn't that good enough?

Rather than bringing up RT stats - which are hardly reliable barometers of whether a film is good or not - how about pointing out specific ways in which my review is "off-base." Especially since I partially agree with your main points (that it's scary and well-done)...

I really don't want to agree with you here, Nick..but I must. I was so psyched for this being a huge horror fan and having heard only glowing reviews..I fully expected to love it...but..I quickly realized that I wasn't being entertained at all...didn't care even a bit whether the bland characters lived or died. Really liked the creature design..but I thought that the action sequences just got tiring after a while. Not a terrible flick..but way undeserving of the credit it's getting.

I have to agree with the critic on this one. "The Descent" has the best of intentions when it comes to delivering the goods, but there came a point in the film where I felt as though I had been jerked from one movie into an entirely different one altogether. The early developments and mid-section moments involving the exploration of the cave were immensely tense, and knowing what the third act had in store, I found myself wishing that the whole cave-dwelling carnivore aspect of the plot was somehow just an elaborate hoax. However, we are treated to a series of gore-laden kills that lack the sufficient scares needed to sustain any suspense. It's not as lethally dull as a film like "Hostel" in this respect, but it comes very close to that line. And the resolution at film's end between two of the female characters only serves to diminish what little sympathy I had built up for one of the women involved. In the end, I couldn't have cared less if they had all died; at least that would have resembled something along the lines of boldness and originality.

You need to check your facts buddy...before you review. For your information this movie was made well before "The Cave" it was released in europe way before "The Cave" was even thought of. Pleaser don't even compare the two.

Mike,

Both The Cave and The Descent got their original domestic theatrical releases in the summer of '05, so they were probably made at roughly the same time.

Nonetheless, my comment that The Descent is a "version" of The Cave doesn't necessarily have to imply that one came before the other. As the Cambridge University Press Dictionary defines it, a version is:

"A particular form of something which varies slightly from other forms of the same thing"

And both, I think it's fair to say, are slightly varying forms of the same thing: namely, the horror movie involving underground monsters attacking cave explorers.

You may backtrack on your definition of version. But it is evident that you did not do your homework on this. The release of Descent pre-dates that of The Cave. I doubt you even sniffed the subplot of the evolution of Sarah. If you're going to focus on writing 5 minute reviews, then perhaps you can take a lesson from Mark Kermode, who actually studies his material rather than just eating the popcorn.

Um, I'm not backtracking on my definition of "version" - I'm clarifying it for those who don't understand what the word means.

And the release of The Descent doesn't predate that of The Cave - in the U.S., where I work, the former was released almost a year after the latter. But thanks for playing.

Don't worry Nick, your logic and use of "version" is perfectly clear for those who actually use their frontal lobes. I just saw the film, and while I think that my rating would be a tad higher (some would say you're more cynical, which I find condescending and stupid; if anything, I'm more forgiving in this particular instance, but no matter), I agree on most of the major criticisms you exhibit. Absolutely hated the first twenty minutes of the film - why such superficially blanketing characters? - but once the descent began, it definitely tapped into 90% of my deepest fears. Two thoughts rest on my mind right now: I shouted "holy fucking shit" VERY loudly in a crowded theater, and Gollum is now cute and cuddly by comparison.

So because they were not made at exactly the same time, means that the two movies cannot be compared? Please stop looking for reasons to bash the author, you aren't proving how smart you are on the internet, you're making yourself look dumb.

Personally this movie gave me a lot of scares, but at the end, there was nothing that really stood out as unnerving or scary. I agree with the review that a lot of the scenes were well-done, but there just wasn't that substance that made it memorable.

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