The Descent, 2005 And some quick thoughts on The Descent 2 2009.
Want
to start off first by saying that I'm not a big horror movie fan there
are a couple dozen films that I really like.Night of the Living Dead,
the shining, the first Halloween, several Japanese titles:
Ringu,Ju-on:the grudge & Honogurai Mizu no soko kara,AKA, Dark
Water. Just to name a few.So I'm not coming to the horror genre
completely out of left field. The reason I watched these two is because
I've seen several reviews on them and wanted to see for myself what I
thought.I would do a full synopsis here but you can just run over to Wikipedia and get the gist of the story so I'm just going to go right into talking about what I like and dislike
First ,The Good. I love the atmosphere of the film great cinematography! the claustrophobia of being in the cave was presented well and made you believe that they were really in danger.annnnd that's about it on the Good of it.
Things I didn't like? The characters really are not developed enough for me to care if they die. That's a big thing for me.The Husband & daughter of Sarah Carter (played by Shauna Macdonald) are killed in the first 4 minutes of the movie, well ...OK I guess I feel bad for Sarah, But I was never really given time to get to know the characters so they seemed more like window dressing, something to just move the plot along.
I just wasn't really sold on the fact that these women over a period of one day turned into these hardened killers I just didn't buy it. In one scene you have a character Beth who has been mortally wounded asking Sarah to kill her. I guess so the underground creatures will not eat her alive anyway,what does she do? After about 5 seconds of hesitation she picks up a rock and smashes her head in... What?! The transition between being terrified & turning into these hardened killers, at least for 2 of the characters Seems almost instantaneous! Its like,"Ok lets start poking out eyes, smashing heads,Killing with climbing equipment!" Sorry,i don't buy it.
And ooooh The close up shots and the Shaky Cam during the kills, was killing me! my argument is and always will be I don't think Hollywood knows how to film action . maybe I'm spoiled by my many years of Asian film watching with well choreographed action/fights.
But my first experience with this type of Camera work was probably Daredevil and that kind of poisoned the water for me on the style. I'm sure there are good ways of using it but shaky cam ,tight shots with LOTS of quick cuts during fights for me just spoil the Action.
There is a scene where they have a fight in a cavern with a lot of the underground creatures and it went something like this. tight close ups of head smash cut, random stab on some part of the body cut, poke eyes out of creature cut and wide shot of everybody standing around covered in blood. smh, sorry I just don't like these types of scenes.
Enough on the first film, moving to the second, I really didn't enjoy the Second film at all!The
Directors were different so that had somthing to do with it. The first Film was directed by Neil Marshall the second was directed by john harris, different style and approach to the subject matter is obvious . The second film made nowhere near as much money as the first film did. 57 million for the first, 2nd film made 13 million, big difference.
My problem with the second one is that it was pretty much telling the story all over again!
woman from the first film Sarah Carter (Shauna Macdonald) escapes, somehow and she is found but she is traumatized and doesn't remember what happened to her or her friends while in the hospital the police come to see her to ask what happened. she says she doesn't know, so they take her from the hospital and call a rescue crew so they can go back into the caves to find Her friends, and guess what happens!? Everybody gets killed... Again!! The end. I have to admit I kind of zoned out on this one just because I felt like I was watching the same movie again didn't help that I was watching them back to back either. Was only mildly interested in the first one and felt it was ok. The Second Film I was thinking ,why did they make this!?
Well that's it for me. I'd say go watch them yourself and you can make up your own mind what you think don't always just take someone's opinion on a Film and decide to watch or to not watch based on what they think they could be right or they could be wrong. you can make up your own mind what you think of them. Talk at you guys later!:-)
