The Descent (2006)

I love to be scared. Lately, however, it's rare that horror movies deliver a true scare for me -- instead it seems that the vast majority of them are settling for making me jump and, maybe, lose my lunch. So, what a wonderfully creepy surprise this movie was!

Six women get together to have a nice little spelunking adventure. One has recently suffered the tragic loss of her husband and daughter and this is meant to be a "back to life" exercise for her. The wonderfully complex relationships between the women are naturally believable -- there's no need for lots of explanation, a terse comment here & a flare of temper there made things plenty clear to me and I so appreciated the understatement. It served the bare bones story, which is genuinely creepy, claustrophobic, desperate, and fair (no surprise that this didn't come out of the American studio system).

There's a lot of gore here, but none of it felt like violence-porn (a trend that increasingly disturbs me). When I clicked off this movie, I was far from my normal post-thriller attitudes, which are generally either: "gross" or "how dumb." Instead, I was quiet. And rather satisfied. And incredibly confused as to why more movies like this aren't being made.

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