Are horror movies by definition insipid repetitions of cheap scares, where undeveloped characters you don't care about embark on meandering journeys and are then subject to arbitrary and relentless gore? If so, THE DESCENT is the perfect horror movie. Six (or five or seven, it really doesn't matter) women (some British, some American, one Asian) go on a crazy cave-diving trip in an unmarked cave in the Appalachians where they are one-by-one devoured alive by the molemen. It took about 40 minutes for the molemen to make an appearance; and only about 15 minutes into the movie, I had turned to Irwin and said, I'm not going to be able to continue watching this movie unless these girls start taking off their clothes and fucking each other or start getting killed. Unfortunately, there was no sex, except for the implied sex between the Asian chick who had been having an affair with the white-girl-protagonist's husband, who gets impaled by a metal rod in the first 5 minutes of the movie. Anyway once it gets going, it's a bit of a relief to see these obnoxious white girls get offed in the claustrophobic cave (the dyke-y girl is the first to go. because gays are immoral and deserve to die -- although this morality doesn't hold up -- why is the adulterous Asian chick who ends up accidentally murdering one of her companions one of the last ones standing? I guess to make her death that much more savory I suppose.) The cheap knee-jerk horror moments were really scary, I will give it that. At one point I got a charley horse in my calf from kicking out so suddenly and forcefully in reaction to the first moleman appearance (Still hurts today). But personally I prefer the more subdued horror movie, like The Ring, where the focus is on a given system of rules, and there is some attention to character and visual mise en scène.
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