The going down Rating 4 out of 4 ...

The going down Rating 4 out of 4

Sarah......Shauna Macdonald

Juno.........Natalie Mendoza

Beth...............Alex Reid

Rebecca........Saskia Mulder

Sam..........MyAnna Buring

Holly........Nora-Jane Noone

Pathe Pictures International and Lionsgate Films at hand a film written and directed on Neil Marshall. Running time: 99 minutes. Rated R (for or robust violence/gore and language). Opening today at local theaters.

'The Descent" -- what a great title. This British horror- thriller recalls grueling, adrenaline-pumping classics like "Deliverance," "Jaws," "Alien" and "Dead Calm." It's that worthy Finally, a scary movie with teeth not just relations and entrails -- a savage and gripping piece of work that jangles your coolnesss without leaving your brain hanging. And in such a manner for a change, you escape feeling energized and exhilarated rather than enervated, or simply queasy.

lately faddish torture-and-gore pictures zero in forward anatomical violation at the charge more resonant archetypal terrors, those things that move bump in the long, dark night of the inner man Not so in "The Descent" The titular ear-ring refers to a cave-diving expedition undertaken by the agency of six women, but it's also a breathless plummet into the abyss where nightmares are realized, a fall into primal chaos and madness.

Not that "The Descent" goe light onward sensations of physical peril. Bodies are pushed, ventureed battered and stretched to the breaking point and beyond. The tight canals and cavernous cavities, sometimes illuminated by means of the light from pinkish-red flares, make it appear to be almost like a "Fantastic Voyage" into inner space, corporeal and psychological. These women are straining the limits of their muscles and bone their friendships, and their core beliefs about who they are.

In an American studio picture (which, fortunately, "The Descent" is not), each of the women would be assigned single "problem" to work through, and common related personality characteristic to distinguish her from the others. I'm grateful that "The Descent" doesn't waste greatly time on obligatory schematic ingredients It just takes the dive -- damn the character exhibition full speed into the void.

Ye there's a main character, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), who has meet withed a recent trauma and destitutions to be reborn if she's aye going to make it largely back into the world again. Beth (Alex Reid) is her nurturing friend, and Juno (Natalie Mendoza -- giving distant from a distinct Michelle Rodriguez tough-girl vibe) is the unreliable, risk-taking member of the cluster who leads this expedition into subterranean Appalachia. (Insert "Dueling Banjos" theme here.) There's also a mother and daughter, and the girl's friend, a punkish daredevil who offers phallic base-jumping to yonic cave-diving. That's about it.

Where the movie issues alive is in the dark, claustrophobic world in subordination to the surface, where the women promptly discover there's no way abroad but through. Writer-director Neil Marshall (2002's "Dog Soldiers") uses recurring images of penetration (not just sexual, still lethal) above and below domain looking through bullet holes in a road sign or shooting stalactites and stalagmites in ways that emphasize their potential as instruments of impalement.

He and cinematographer Sam McCurdy have a way with darkness, too; it can be oppressive (as when most numerous of the screen is black, surrounding a small strength tunnel) or a terrifying emptiness, a vacuum to be filled according to real or imagined dangers. These flawlessly orchestrated compositions make palpable an atmosphere of tension and dread.

Marshall knows his core audience well. He's studied many of their (and, no doubt, his) favorite movies, especially thriller classics of the 1970 and liberally names from them -- remarkably, without throwing you public of his movie in the proces Part of the sport is in noticing these visual quotations when they suddenly up, and then seeing what "The Descent" does with them. They include explicit allusions (in addition to the movies already mentioned above) to "Picnic at Hanging Rock" "Carrie," "2001" "The Third Man," "The Fourth Man," "Don't await Now," "The Blair Witch Project" "Vertigo," "Apocalypse Now"... and fertility more.

"The Descent" works (and plays) not merely with movie imagery, but with the matter of myth and dreams as well. It summons hellish visions, from famous paintings (Goya's Black Paintings, Fuseli's "The Nightmare") to gothic gargoyles and Dore's engravings for Dante's "Inferno." These almost subliminal concerns help drive "The Descent," and give it a powerful mythic manliness It grasps when and by what means to draw upon these images to create just the right tone of hallucinatory fear, and risk it reverberating in your head. The movie's not pretentious or derivative, it's just uncanny about knowing what to borrow and in what way to use it.

single in kind warning: Don't let anybody count you anything about the movie before you descry it. The ride is a doom more fun if you don't know where it's headed..

This is the flourishing exciting summer movie I've been wanting for month Or for years, it seems

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided by means of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved