tadcranky

The Descent: Decent
At the beginning of the new movie The Descent three young women with English accents finish a whitewater rafting trip. One of the women departs with her young daughter and distracted husband, who promptly drives their car into oncoming traffic, killing himself and the daughter. Sara, the wife, survives.

Sometime later, the women, plus some other female friends, meet up again in North Carolina to go caving. Apparently, they're Adventure Girls! Juno (as in an old Internet Service Provider, not the capital of Alaska, which we find out during the closing credits) was one of the original three, and is apparently the leader of this adventure. Though not such a good leader, as she leads her friends to a different cave than they expected to explore (she thought it would be more special!), which happens to be inhabited by weird cave creatures, who are scary, even to Juno, who looks a little like Bjork. She also doesn't have any maps, and she didn't leave what they call a "flightplan" with anyone, so when they get lost, they're pretty much screwed as it is, and much more so when the cave creatures discover them.

All of this makes for a very tense movie. There are no minorities in the movie, so it's harder than the usual horror movie to guess who will be next to die. The movie gives a believable sense of being in a cave, which seems like it would be pretty cool, as long as you weren't led by a psycho like Juno, who we also learn has something to do with why Sara's husband was distracted enough to wreck his car. I haven't seen the numbers that this movie made over the weekend, but if there is a Descent II, I'll probably go see it.