by MALCOLM FRASER

If you’re in the mood for an extreme adventure/ female bonding/ claustrophobic horror flick, try The Descent, a new horror film from the U.K. that made a splash when it showed at Fantasia last month. The movie throws it all in the pot and gets the mix just right.

A multinational gang of adventure-loving women meets up for their annual expedition, this time spelunking in the caves of deepest Appalachia. Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) has lost her family in an accident not long ago and is feeling psychically fragile. At first, the friends form an Oprah-worthy support group. But when badass Juno (Natalie Mendoza) goes off-book on the trip planning, the group gets trapped underground and tensions start to bubble up. The gal pals end up having to deal not only with some nasty cave-dwellers who make the mountain men from Deliverance look like The Beverly Hillbillies, but with some interpersonal issues that pop up with impeccably bad timing, making the women’s survival even dicier.

The film has invited comparisons to Alien, which make sense with the slow-building terror and girl-power vibe, but it’s actually fairly unique within the horror genre. Starting off with a refreshingly unpredictable tone, writer/director Neil Marshall takes his time building up the plot and developing the characters. He ably manipulates us helpless audience members with some tight pacing and clever editing, drawing out the tension in subtle ways instead of going for cheapo scares (at least at first). The all-female cast is also a breath of fresh air; it’s nice to sit through any kind of film, let alone a genre flick, without having to withstand gratuitous outbursts of machismo. The strong performances from the largely U.K.-based cast give the film a realistic feel that sustains until the action starts to pick up.

As The Descent builds towards its climax, Marshall falls back on a few well-worn tricks of the horror trade and piles on the requisite buckets of gore, but by that time you’re caught up in the action and no longer expecting subtlety or depth. When Macdonald falls into an actual pool of blood and emerges all glistening and intense, you know Marshall has gone over the top, but at that point it’s right where you want to be. Only the actual conclusion is a bit disappointing—evidently Marshall cut two endings for the U.K. and U.S. releases, and we get the latter version, which is shorter and feels abrupt and dumbed-down. The DVD will no doubt provide the goods, but The Descent is worth seeing in a theatre; the creepy sound and impressive low-light visuals create an atmosphere that plays well on the big screen.

The Descent is genuinely scary, not in the creepy-surreal style of much post-Ring horror, but on a primal gut level. Anyone who suffers even mildly from claustrophobia will find certain stretches of the film almost impossible to watch, as the women crawl their way through increasingly dark, narrow tunnels. It risks turning you off cave exploration for life, but in return you’ll get a good solid scare all wrapped up in a nicely crafted package.

The Descent opens Friday, Aug. 4

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