The Descent complaints and spoilers




The following list of my three specific dialogue-related complaints with The Descent contain some major SPOILERS for the film. Do NOT read these complaints unless you've seen the film.



OK? OK.



Now, as I was saying….

Complaint One
Early in the film, the two Scots, Sarah and Beth, are driving through the Appalachians on their way to Juno's camp. As they dial around on the radio, all they find is what Beth refers to as "shyte kicker music (country) and praise Jesus stuff."



Well, it just so happens that I live in the Appalachian mountains, and, yes, there is a lot of that kind of stuff on the radio in these parts. However, even here in shyte-kickin' praise-Jesus-land, we have a few modern conveniences that enable us to listen to the music that best suits our personal taste. We have cassette players. We even have CD players. Hell, a couple of us have them thar Eye-Pod new-fangled things. So if we've got that kind of technology here in the Appalachians, you'd think that they'd have it in Scotland, too. Maybe Sarah and Beth should have brought some CDs with them?



Ultimately, though, my complaint comes down to this: If you're going to mock an entire region of America with a music-related contrivance, there are better and more creative ways to do it. Ever seen Deliverance?





Complaint Two
At one point, one of the monsters crawls over top of Rebecca and Sam and doesn't detect them because they lie motionless. As it crawls over them, we clearly see it's dead eyes in the screen of Sam's video recorder. Once it's past, Rebecca announces "They're blind! They have to use their hearing to hunt! They can't see!"



Oh? On behalf of the audience, thanks for the tip.



What a pointless moment of dialogue. Why have characters explain to the audience what we've just seen and figured out on our own? This wouldn't bother me if it weren't for the fact that this movie clearly relies on several key elements that the viewer HAS to figure out on his or her own. The whole affair between Sarah's husband and Juno, for instance, was key… but it was left in the air, unspoken. If you can trust me to figure that out, you can trust me to figure out that the creatures are blind, too.







Complaint Three
My third complaint is my biggest complaint with the film. It involves a line of dialogue so stupid and pointless that it momentarily broke the spell of the movie and brought me "out of the moment." It was during the scene right after Juno has accidentally killed Beth and met up with Rebecca and Sam. Juno tells them that she's figured out that the creatures "go to the surface to hunt and then return to the caves with their kills."


I swear, I almost yelled "Oh, bulls**t!" at the screen.



For one thing, if the writer and director knew the Appalachian mountain area as well as he thinks he does, he'd realize that the average Appalachian good-ol-boy spends half his life in the woods hunting, camping, fishing and/or hiking. Creatures like this would have been discovered by native sons LONG before a group of European women happened upon them if such things had been roaming the woods… night OR day. They'd have been discovered, they'd have been documented… and, likely as not, there'd be an official hunting season declared on them. I mean, what good ol' Appalachian boy wouldn't want the head of an albino cave-bat-monster mounted on his wall?


For another thing, when it comes to movie monsters, less is more. The less you tell me about them, the more I have to figure out on my own, the better.


The worst thing about this line, though, was that it was such an OBVIOUS set-up for a stupid, pointless sequel. Can't you see the previews in your head already? "For years they hunted and lived underground in silence until a group of women awakened their taste for human blood… "

Of course, once you start picking apart things like this, it's easy to just pick the movie to shreads. There are other holes in the film as well…



For instance, why didn't the creatures notice body heat or the heat from torches when they crawled over their victims?



Where did Juno get such wonderful mascara? I mean, that stuff never ran!


Wouldn't Holly have gone into shock from her compound fracture right away? That's what usually happens with compound fractures, even without collapsed caves and albino bat monsters about.


Why was there always just enough ambient light to make out what we were supposed to be able to see? Etc. With films like this it's best not to pick them apart. That's why, in spite of my complaints, I recognize The Descent for what it is… a damn good horror film. It's well worth four stars.

back to The Descent review.