I checked out The Descent on Tuesday night with a few friends. I’d heard a lot of good stuff about it both from the media and people whose opinions I trust. I was a huge horror movie fan in the 80’s and saw most of what came out, both good and bad. Over the last 10 years, there have been two or three horror movies that have gotten as much good word of mouth. One was Blair Witch Project, which, when I ultimately saw it on video, was extremely disappointing. It was a classic example of expectations being pumped so high that there was no hope that I would ever like it. The second was High Tension, which is much more satisfying.
The Descent managed to mostly live up to its hype, but not without viewing the extra minute that was cut for the American theatrical release. Apparently, domestic test audiences reacted poorly to the original ending, so they cut it. Thanks, dumbasses. As others have pointed out, the loss of that minute guts one of the subplots and removes some of the depth of the movie. Maybe I’m getting old, but the fast cut style seen in many recent movies and used during some of the more intense sequences in this film really annoyed me.
I’m not sure what to make of the fact that the two better horror films of the last ten years were made in Europe (The Descent is British and High Tension is French).
[tags]thedescent, horror, hightension, hautetension, blairwitchproject, edited[/tags]
2 Responses to “Descending to the lowest common denominator”
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I would agree with you about the fast cuts being annoying during the attack scenes. My brain must be too old to keep up with that kind of editing.
Fast cuts in general are one of those elements of modern cinema that just don’t translate from the digital process the movie is edited in to the final 28-fps analog projected film. Same thing with a lot of dialog these days, it seems like they use too much of the spectrum of sound when they do the mixing and you can’t always make out what is said until you hear it via television. I freely admit that I am getting old, but the fact that neither of these things is a concern when I view the DVD version of a movie tells me that the problem is not in my age-addled brain.