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99 minutes. Rated R for violence and gore.

STARRING: Shauna Macdonald (Sarah), Natalie Mendoza (Juno), Alex Reid (Beth), Saskia Mulder (Rebecca), Nora-Jane Noone (Holly), MyAnna Buring (Sam), Oliver Milburn (Paul) and Molly Kayll (Jessica).
 

Question: When does an adventure cross the line from harrowing into horrific? Answer: When the issue ceases to be, “Will we make it home in time for dinner?” — and instead becomes, “How will we avoid being the main course for dinner?”

The Descent, the latest picture from horror writer/director Neil Marshall, is the kind of movie that explores this question. Six adventurous women spend a day spelunking in a remote Appalachian cave, and soon find that, as the movie’s publicity notes, “they are now prey … They are forced to unleash their most primal instincts in an all-out war against unspeakable horror.”

The first act of The Descent seems to play as a fairly conventional genre piece — the macho buddy-adventure gone awry. Deliverance, of course, set the standard for this type of film. When big stars attract big budgets, films of this type look like Cliffhanger or The Edge. On a smaller urban scale, they take the form of films like Rounders or The Pope of Greenwich Village. In either case, the primary narrative tension is derived from a small group of friends finding real-world situations escalating into high-stakes, winner-takes-all struggles for survival.

The Descent recalls a similarly low-budget horror flick released several years ago—Ravenous, starring Robert Carlyle and Guy Pearce. Ravenous was a period piece, set in the Sierra Madre in the late 1800s. Like The Descent, the story in Ravenous — concerning a military rescue party sent to investigate the disappearance of a band of settlers — took a left turn from conventional narrative into madness and the macabre, ultimately becoming a tale of savage survival in the face of inhuman barbarity.

In The Descent, Neil Marshall isn’t content with merely human villains. Like Ravenous, this is a horror film, after all, and while Marshall most definitely wants to explore the human capacity for inhumanity, the second act of his story more-or-less veers off into the conventions of his chosen milieu. The six women find themselves cut off from safe retreat. Tensions rise when certain truths are revealed. One by one, they find themselves picked off by murderously evil adversaries.

I found, however, that The Descent transcends the conventions of both the adventure-gone-awry and the horror flick. In fact the film this most reminds me of — in terms of inventiveness, symbolism, and thematic content — is Apocalypse Now! (the original cut of which is coincidentally being rereleased this month). Coppola’s masterpiece used Vietnam as the setting to explore the depths to which humanity must sink in order to master itself, to ask the question: Is defeating the enemy worth becoming like the enemy? Symbolically, Apocalypse Now! argued that there was little difference between primitive savagery and the barbarity of modern warfare, that it’s all horrific. The third act turned on Willard’s decision to become Kurtz in order to defeat Kurtz, rising as the ultimate warrior-assassin from a steaming jungle mudbath.

The third act of The Descent borrows directly from Coppola’s visual and thematic toolkit. Like Coppola, Marshall juxtaposes symbols of primitive survival — animal skulls instead of Coppola’s stone faces — with increasingly savage and impassive human visages, primarily those of Juno and Sarah, the story’s central characters. To defeat their enemies, Sarah and Juno must cease to be mere survivors. They must transcend the therapeutic adventurousness that helps them cope with personal tragedy and the sterility of modern society. They must become primeval in order to defeat the primeval.

On another level, the film is a slightly biased parable about the costs of unequally yoked international coalitions getting in over their heads. Juno, the American leader of the group, leads her friends into the cave under false pretexts. When it becomes clear that she has no concrete exit plan, she loses the support of her European allies. Ultimately, Juno realizes that she is in over her head, and that she is up against an enemy that she has neither the weaponry nor the will to defeat.

Oddly, this mishmash of genre conventions, cinematic references, and current-event commentary works remarkably well, and manages to overcome the moments when low-budget inventiveness crosses the line into pure cheese. As a caving film, it is fairly convincing (but less so when technical climbing techniques must be employed). The film’s monsters are plausibly designed and executed. The Descent is even a cinematic rarity, a film shot in total darkness while reasonably maintaining the illusion of realistic light sources.

But what really makes this film work is the performances of the actors. Sure, some of the characters are thinly realized. Holly is the reckless one. Rebecca and Sam are sisters. Beth is the loyal friend. Juno is the domineering leader. Sarah is the traumatized weakling.

Natalie Mendoza, however, plays Juno with such zest and complexity that we soon forget she’s been asked to play a specific type. The supporting characters are all engaging and unique, almost making us forget that they’re the narrative equivalents of Star Trek redshirts. And Shauna Macdonald’s Sarah is simply a revelation. Her transformation is as convincing as it is spooky, and horrific.

I was thrilled to watch this movie. Marshall’s inventiveness makes Bryan Singer’s latest effort look like the work of a hack. And the way in which Marshall celebrates — or at least captures — the potential of feminine strength takes away the bad taste left by You, Me, and Dupree.

Dollar for entertainment dollar, The Descent delivers. Is it perfect? No. But I’m much more tolerant of artistic imperfection when it’s plain that those involved are doing their absolute best.