After a tragic accident, six friends reunite for a caving expedition. Their adventure soon goes horribly wrong when a collapse traps them deep underground and they find themselves pursued by bloodthirsty creatures. As their friendships deteriorate, they find themselves in a desperate struggle to survive the creatures and each other.
While the movie has wonderful moments of unmotivated tension that make sure we're quite ill at ease from the beginning, it's also got a few too many of the kind of cheap boo-scares that indicate a director not fully trusting his grip on you.
– Geoff Pevere,
Toronto Star,
4 Aug 2006
rotten:
For my money, [the] first 20 or so minutes are the best in the film. Once the real adventure gets underway in the cave, things get less interesting.
– Claudia Puig,
USA Today,
4 Aug 2006
fresh:
The Descent sustains a level of intensity that most horror films can barely muster for five minutes.
– Scott Tobias,
AV Club,
5 Aug 2006
rotten:
This intermittently effective UK horror thriller carefully establishes the psychological relationships among the women, then squanders this calibrated and generally plausible setup with a series of crude, implausible, and scattershot horror effects.
– Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Chicago Reader,
24 Sep 2007
fresh:
Marshall could very well be the Caravaggio of the B-movie.