10 - The Michigan Daily - Monday, August 7, 2006 Marshall's latest serves up claustrophobic terror By Mary Kate Varnau Daily Arts Writer takes its tim in the group parts wheret ally and phy little clues- Neil Marshall acquired a loyal fanbase crevices, ev with his 2002 action/horror flick, "Dog Sol- that they are diers." Werewolves vaulted his career into With abou the limelight. And now, like glimpse bloodthirsty cave-dwell- audience th ing creatures will ensure The Descent before the nt that it stays there. Mar- At the Showcase pretty slowu shall wrote and directed and the Quality 16 off and rune "The Descent," which Lions Gate blur of inte bears many comparisons to unmitigated Bruce Hunt's 2005 thriller "The De "The Cave," only with an all-female cast and ness. It's a c an overall better product. Marshall fans will screechinga not be disappointed in his newest endeavor ly fight tacti - they'll be terrified. with which The first hour of "The Descent" is an use everyth eerie, claustrophobic documentation of six dried out hu friends' spelunking adven- ture gone wrong. The story 'The Descent' is centers around Sarah (Shauna McDonald, best known for her the most artful work in the British television series "Spooks"), who loses of the summer's her husband and only child in the first five minutes of the neverending film. A year after the acci- dent, her friends rally the old horror train. group together for a caving expedition. But the venture goes sour when film. She's a the exit collapses and the party finds out that to survive, c one of their own tricked them into exploring kicking more an undiscovered site. is subpar, es The six fumble their way through pitch- not in a way black passages, meeting life-threatening chal- In most h lenges and injuries. The first half of the film characters i ne establishing an insipid friction dynamic, becoming laborious in the women struggle both emotion- sically. Sarah is the first to notice - noises echoing softly through idence of previous spelunkers - not alone in the cave. t a half hour left, we seea "Signs"- of a creature from far away. The inks that we'll have a breather ext encounter, as the pace has been up to this point, but no. Marshall's fning. The next 30 minutes are a nse, fleeting suspense met with gore and horror. scent" revels in its gruesome- elebration of tearing flesh, raspy and moments of unexpected, gris- ics. The women have no weapons to combat the predators, so they ing from their climbing picks to man bones to defend themselves. In what is possibly the gori- est scene of the film, Sarah kills one of the creatures by jamming both of her thumbs into his eyes sockets and pushing down all the way to her palms. Sarah, the character who began as the most demoral- ized and mousy, becomes Car- rie on crack by the end of the woman possessed by the instinct overed in blood from head to toe, re ass than Lara Croft. The acting pecially on McDonald's part, but that takes away from the terror. orror movies, the sexuality of the s played up to the extreme. And "Sex and the City" + "Survivor" = 'The Descent" with a premise like this (six women trapped in a cave together), the viewer comes in expect- ing some shamelessly low-cut spelunking gear. But it doesn't happen. Each of the women is beautiful in the classical sense, and hardly sexualized at all. "The Descent" is the most artful of the summer's neverending horror train. Marshall lulls his audience into a relaxed (albeit some- what uneasy) state in the first half, then finds new, stomach-clenching ways to shock in the second. Horror aficionados will delight in the summer's goriest film and the viewers who are wary of thrillers will be pleased, as this is the kind of movie that terrifies in the moment but doesn't haunt you later. Wth DJ Jinx spinninc 7 3 4 . 9 94.58 53 tndustrial & Syntnth her , rDRO in the Red & Blue Roos 18+ // toss,' osen @e sr" E2Bud & dtight, $2 vodk drinks all night. $2.5 beron, Bass, Newcastle SRed Stripe before 11pm. SCgEEpESBEER APPRECIATION NIGHT SPORTSGRILL & PUS $2 PINTS 310 Maynard, A2 of ALL 25 Drafts Next to the Maynard parking structure no cover.