What to start a dyalogue like this one?
to start one of your own.The Descent, directed by Neil Marshall
Trapped by a cave-in, a group of women on a weekend spelunking expedition in Scotland pit themselves against bat-like humanoids blocking their only escape route. Blood, nearly nude mud-wrestling and a thousand reasons to not go into the cave again.
Jimmy Two Hats
Already I'm wrong. The movie was filmed in Scotland but the story is set in Appalachia. Could be either place, all the characters seem to be Brits. The director cites Deliverance as an influence on the story and you might as well cut the scene with the dueling banjo kid and splice it in here, because it would fit. Just make the porch a dark cave and give him a rotting carcass of something instead of a banjo. The difference is, the weather is wet and cold and the hillbillies are bat eared albinos. I think I used to know that family, they lived over on Long Creek. It's a scary movie, but not always for the reasons the director intended.
Alice Moon
I'm frightened by the idea of a weekend away with a bunch of women who think they all have something to prove. But I understand the need for that, as a woman who has constantly had to prove myself.
I'm split on the whole Afraid to Go Into the Woods mentality. Partly, it keeps people out of the woods who shouldn't be there and keeps people in general away, which is always good. It is like a modern superstition that won't die that terrible things happen in the dark, in the trees, in caves or natural areas. We've killed off most of the things that need to be feared except other human beings.
The other side of that argument is that these people who have been feared out of the wild places don't mind if others do or do themselves actively make war on those places, till we have very few wild places left. I don't want a future where I visit the park and find it filled with people in Disney animal outfits because there are no animals anymore.
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Jimmy Two Hats
I'm much the opposite when it comes to wild places and feel more comfortable there than anywhere else. People are the real animals, and I always watch my back around them. Backwoods people bother me less than other people. Maybe it's because I know what's behind some of the weirdness they always have. Usually the weirdness serves a purpose.
Well, there aren't any backwoods people in this movie unless you count the albino bat people and I don't. I'm sure they were somebody's vision of the ultimate hillbilly, an inbred clan that lived in a cave and gradually increased their stupidity level. I didn't care for the caricatures in Deliverance and I don't like them here, either. Better for me to just look at it as an average monster movie.
The people in the movie, the women who head off to the wilderness for some great fun, are the sort I'd not hang around with at all. Technical climbers and gearheads, they'll be fine until they run out of something and then they'll walk back to the car. They impress me as people who take risks for fun, which is something a hillbilly doesn't do. You only gamble with your own bones if you have medical insurance and a cell phone.
But, if I get past the part where I realize I don't really care about these people, and into the cave where scary things happen, it's pretty much ok in there. Being scared is fun, even if a lot of what scares me is how unprepared these high tech people turn out to be.
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Alice Moon
I like the way you think. : )
I don't believe the creatures were supposed to be hillbilly people. I suppose that is a possible, but I figured they were early humans who were transformed somehow. Maybe the Indian peoples or early cavers. Which leads me to wonder if the surviving woman will turn into one of them.
I like that the women fight and do so effectively. Too many times the women in movies turn into hysterical, screaming liabilities. But it was obvious from the beginning that these ladies were reckless in many instances, depended too much on others, weren't all working from the same plan. They were a team, but not a team at all.
I completely agree about the gear. You have to know how to use it, it's good to have it, but you have to know what you can do without it.
I liked watching and thinking about the bat society. There they were, living their lives inside their many cave fingers. They had their system for finding food, their bone pit. All was calm. Then these smelly, loud humans came in. They invaded. They started murdering the bat people. It was horrifying.
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Jimmy Two Hats
I probably wouldn't be using the hillbilly analogy if the director hadn't admitted that his inspiration came from Deliverance (and some other redneck horror movies). I saw some similarities in the beginning of the movie and at least while watching it didn't see any more. Afterwards some of the movie makes better sense if Deliverance is a sort of template. The ending where you aren't sure if the survivor got away or just went a little crazy is like the scene in Deliverance where Voight's character wakes up from his nightmare. It's just not as well explained. I thought it was a bit out of place until I matched it up to the previous movie. I don't really like that way of making movies as movies about other movies. There are other ideas to be used.
The bat people definitely got the short end in this story, very seldom treated as anything but monsters even though as you say they weren't causing anybody any harm. The darkness of the shots prevented me from being sure about many of the details, including whether the first encounter where the bat person is face to face with one of the screaming adventurers resulted in her head being pulled off or not. Possibly the screaming hurt the bat person's sensitive ears--reasons for the violence are unclear. Once the violence gets started its the bat people who get the worst of it. Cave species are very sensitive and slow to recover from disasters so it's fortunate the expedition provided so much meat.
I agree, the good part of this show is that the women deal with their own problems and you don't see the female characters being pushed into the background while some male tyrant decides to be protective and tell everyone what to do.
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Alice Moon
They weren't very aware of their surroundings. I heard the bat people, single monsters, clicking away with their radar long before they showed up, although I will give the women points for fairly quickly figuring out the monsters couldn't see them if they held still. Having said that, I think that the bat people would have smelled them or felt them when they creeped over top of them. I'm willing to overlook that.
Hey, I don't mind an homage to a great film, and I do consider Deliverance to be one. It may be viewed more as a buddy picture, but it was gripping, very time-specific and yet timeless in its content, a neat capsule of events. It was pro environmental when that wasn't a priority and when people could still go places without fifteen permits, permission from authorities and paying a thousand dollars a head. The fact that the male rape scene was blown out of proportion to all else is a shame. The canoeing in that movie was visceral and dangerous and reminded me of trips of my own.
So if this was based on Deliverance, I can see it and I agree with that treatment: the attention paid to <here>spelunking prep (which I have to take on their word for accuracy in some spots as my caving is limited to what can be accomplished with hand and foot), the respect for the process (even though the characters threw it out the window as part of the plot), the human drama alongside the adventure, nature as a powerful (unpredictable, unforgiving) force. I agree, it is not as good as its inspiration, but I respect the effort.
There were spots I found disagreeable. Surprisingly, not bloody ones. The ones where women practically showered in cave water are chief in mind. It was cold up top. The cave has to be more than ten degrees cooler. That water should have been ice cold and they are hardly wearing any clothing. I don't care how breathable your outdoor fabric, it stays cold and wet and sucks off heat for a lot longer than you'd like to be standing under that waterfall or heedlessly slopping through standing pools.
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Jimmy Two Hats
Whenever I see a movie that pulls a framework from a previous hit film I expect it to be better, otherwise to me it's cheating. The Descent isn't good enough to pull itself out of that hole. However, I was able to watch it without getting really bored or wishing I was somewhere else, and that's a pretty good rating from me.
Technically I thought it missed a lot of things, regarding caving. The movie was made on a set rather than in a real cave, which explains a lot of things like the warm water. Some things are explainable by seeing the characters as stupid, which isn't necessary to the story and could have been avoided. Nobody's trying to ration flashlights even after the cave-in traps them and they have no idea how long they'll be down there. Seems like that would be a first priority.
I do wonder where the ice ax came from. I think it's an ice ax--never did get a clear look at it because it's always half buried in somebody's head. If it's an ice ax it's very out of place in a spelunker's kit. Most of the other technical mistakes stem from not filming in a real setting. Way way after the movie was finished somebody probably thought, oh yeah, and the water's cold. Missed that. All the semi naked mud wrestling and nobody thought about water temperature. Unforgivable.
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Alice Moon
Heh... You said hole.
I think it more likely than none of these people has actually ever been in a cave. While I think the axe is traditionally used for ice (and I think hers was that type), there are mountain axes. I don't think you would have much use for them in a cave, but maybe. They're cool enough to tell yourself, yes, I definitely might need this. Why, I feel the urge to carry one on my runs now.
Yes, there was a lack of rationing and of calm, common sense rational thinking. That sort of movie would have been a lot shorter and less dramatic. I don't know if I would have watched it. Instead of being The Descent it would have been Five Women and a Cave (I forget how many there were. I kept confusing who was who once they got inside).
They made a second one of these?! Holy crap, there is indeed a Descent 2. That is just ridiculous. No one survived. The very best hope they could have for an excuse for a sequel would be to have Sarah alive as a bat creature and eating a new set of cavers. No, that isn't what happens. But if anyone makes a third film, I have dibs on the idea credit.
There are people who think this movie is terrifying. What? The only scared I was involved minor startles to which I am easy prey.
I don't know. I see that movies like this want us to come to care about the characters before they're put into harm's way, so we're put through agonizing lengths of material to achieve this end. I sit squirming and waiting for the action to start. I'd rather get to know the people as sides of their personalities emerge under the pressure of the situation, if I must get to know them at all. After all, this is not a character driven film, though it believes itself to be one.
Too often, there are two movies- the scenes before the action (which in this case are a female bond-fest that I would run away from in real life) and the action/thriller (not) half of the movie, which is mostly disconnected from the first half and not great, but entertaining enough.
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Jimmy Two Hats
Well, in this movie you're not supposed to learn to care about the people, you're supposed to pay attention because at the end there will be a quiz--or at least a part of the movie you won't get unless you were awake during the first part. I was awake, but I've trained not to pay attention to the part that makes us care about who lives. I just make a decision as to whether I care about the group or not and I didn't find this group particularly entertaining. And I failed the quiz at the end.
There were parts I found pretty scary, but they had to do with traversing chasms and getting stuck in narrow passageways. There was a cave where I grew up with a cold spring coming out of it year round and stories about how if you ducked under the water and held your breath you could squeeze through this narrow flooded passage into a huge room that opened up behind. Tried that once. Narrow passage with just enough room over the water to put your nose up for a breath. Not your head, just your nose. I won't do that again.
Yet there are people who think that sort of experience is fun and a great way to spend a weekend. If the rumours of survivors of this expedition really are true, they probably came back the next week to do it all again. Some people are like that. That's probably the name of the sequel: The Descent II -- The Next Weekend. Same people with bandaids on their elbows and plenty of medical insurance.
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Alice Moon
I am happy to leave the squeezing through very small passages to shamanic training in dreaming. I have had off and on claustrophobia throughout my life. You wouldn't think something like that would come and go, yet it has. It is an excellent opportunity to try to control your thoughts and reactions in a situation that feels completely out of your control, potentially deadly. It is as if it is being imposed upon you, the near panic. The whole world, reordered and this the new reality.
You know why I wasn't afraid of the chasms? Because we couldn't see down. As they passed over that one deep hole beyond the cave paintings, they dropped a rock and heard it land. Later, when someone fell there, there was a splash. And as they crossed, one of the women yelled Don't look down! to a panicked teammate. Um, even if you all shined your lights in that direction, she wasn't going to be able to see down.
I chose this movie because I passed it on television partway through and thought it looked neat. It wasn't good. It wasn't really bad. It was only eh.
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In this dyalogue...
Starter
I'm a Baby Boomer still too young to retire, and I'm a writer who decided to spend most of his life doing things rather than writing about them. I like wild places and strange things. I'm a backpacker, a sailor, and to some extent a martial artist; I practice meditation. I'm part Native American and part Scottish and grew up a hillbilly in the Oz... Full ProfileYou can also find Jimmy Two Hats at:
- http://jamestwohats.com/skinwalker/blog1.php?blog=1
- http://www.jamestwohats.com/americanshaman/index.html
- http://www.jamestwohats.com/jthbackpacking/index.html
- http://jamestwohats.com/BackPackBlog/
Responder
Monastic pagan, militant, ascetic, misanthrope, vegan, fitness freak, Dreamer. While I plan to use my special powers for good, the constant greying of moral issues I confront paired with my Libran temper allows for the chance that anything may happen. I aspire to a monastic existence, but still enjoy some aspects of society... Full ProfileYou can also find Alice Moon at:
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Alice-Moon/1445017700
- http://hubpages.com/hub/Great-Movies-for-Kids
- http://hubpages.com/hub/Top-Zombie-Movies
- http://jamestwohats.com/indate/
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