Reviews from Netflix Rentals

I can't seem to get myself to go out to the movies right now. There are must sees out there right now like "Dreamgirls," "Letters From Iwo Jima," "Inland Empire," "The Queen," and yet I stay behind watching movies from Netflix and DVDs that I bought when I should have just rented them.

So let's start off with...The Descent

I just rented this recently, and I never got myself to see it in a movie theater. I like horror movies, but you can still see me covering my ears (not my eyes) when something scary is about to happen. But it really says something when a movie that is scary in theaters remains just as scary on the small screen. "The Descent" is one of those movies like "Alien" that freaks you out even on a shitty twelve inch TV that is about to break down for the last time.

For the record, I have a 27 inch TV that I got while I was in college.

"The Descent" is by no means original, but that doesn't matter. Listen to the commentary by diretor Neil Marshall, and even he points out some of the influences that become more evident. You can see "Deliverance" and "John Carpenter's The Thing" (especially in David Juliyan's score) in the finished product as well as "Apocalypse Now."

Basically, it's about these 6 women who decide to search this cavern on a weekend expedition. As they go down, they think they know what they are doing, but soon their guide Juno reveals that this is a new cave that is not on any maps, and she wants everyone to be the first to explore it and name it. The problem is, they have no idea where they are going, and they soon find that they are not alone.

This was one scary movie. It's a haunted house movie, but in a cave. I watched the making of documentary after I saw the movie, and it really shows what a triumph of design the movie is. All the cave shots were done on a stage in Pinewood, but you could never tell it from watching. They perfectly captured the claustrophobic nature of being in such an enclosed space that you did not feel like you were watching it as much as you are participating in it. You want to get out of the cave just as badly as those Atlanta businessmen wanted to survive the river and those nasty hillbillies in "Deliverance."