The Descent (2005)

THE DESCENT  (2005)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Neil Marshall
    Shauna MacDonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid,
    Saskia Mulder, Nora-Jane Noone, MyAnna Buring
Six women, all in their 20s with movie-star looks, meet up to go spelunking in the Appalachians. When the group's pushiest member ditches the guidebook just before they hike off to the cave, it's not a good sign. Then it turns out they're  not in the cave they'd planned to explore, but a cave nobody's ever explored. Then a cave-in seals off the passage behind them. And they start coming across caving gear from 100 years ago: The cave has been explored before. Then there are these piles of bones. Lots of them. And the "Crawlers" - predatory, humanoid creatures that look like a cross between Gollum and a grub. And they've still got to find a way out, from two miles below the surface of the earth. There are a handful of well-calculated shocks in this, the kind that come out of nowhere and make you jump out of your chair. But there's not much in the way of atmosphere, and as the movie goes on, the suspense doesn't build up, it slacks off. The action scenes are incoherent - lightning-fast cuts and dim light turn out to be a bad combination. You can sense a lot of movement and see a lot of blood, but you don't know what's going on. There's a nice, bitchy chemistry between the women, especially at the beginning, but the dirtier and bloodier they get, the harder it is to tell one from the other. By the time their ordeal is over, the survivors are all going to look like Carrie after the prom.