Talkie Zoo: THE DESCENT

Well, this has gotten mixed reviews but I'll just say it -- I liked it. See, I like female heroes and movies that feature strong, self-assured women. You know, the kind of woman I wish I really was!

In The Descent (2005; R), the women are athletic and adventurous, which was shown in the first scene of them running the rapids in some distant river. After a tragic accident that took the lives of one of the women's husband and daughter, she is talked into going on a spelunking adventure with her friends, to help her put the past behind her. They take along plenty of gear such as ropes, hooks, lanterns, digital cameras, glow sticks, and some light survival foods. They wind up in a cave that really hasn't been explored before because one of the women had a secret desire to be famous for exploring it. Off they go into that black hole in the ground, where, wouldn't you know it, the crawl space they went through caved in behind them

Now they're stranded and don't know the way out. In the darkest places, one uses a digital video camera to light up the cave so they can see what they're doing and also capture footage of their ordeal. Monsters lurk around every corner down there, though. Monsters that are blind from evolving in that cave. So, just to see them means using the night vision camera setting.

In fact, they use the camera so much that I wondered how the camera battery lasted so long!

Still, even with the improbabilities, this was a pretty good movie. Watch out for the gore and language, of course. What monster flick would be complete without them these days?