Writer/Director: Neil Marshall (2005)In talking with a consulting client and friend on the West Coast about horror films, we asked ourselves why the innocent die in some popular horror films. I decided to take a look at DESCENT—Neil Marshall's 2005 story about "Six Chicks with Picks" (axes, that is). It was made in the UK for about $5.5MM and did $26MM in the US and $57MM worldwide.
The movie is about 94 minutes if you exclude the opening and closing credits. This would mean a Moment of Grace (the mid point) is at 47.7 minutes, and the two act breaks at about 24 min and 71 minutes, if ideally structured.
TURNING POINTS / BREAKS
As I discuss below the Act 1/2 breaks occurs about 36 minutes, the group Moment of Grace (MOG) does occur exactly at 47 minutes, and the Act 2/3 break plus the MOG for the protagonist, occurs at about 75 minutes. (Below, when mentioning the structure of the turning points, that is the timing of events in the story, I refer both to minutes or pages as if they were equivalent. In reality they are not, but page counts is all a writer has to work with -- if he formats the pages correctly, and few writers do -- and minutes are all an editor has to work with.)
The story goes like this: After a white-water rafting trip for three women, a car accident kills the husband and daughter of one of the women, Sarah. A year later, to help Sarah get control of her life again and get over her nightmares and fears, her friends, two from the white water rafting trip, take her on a caving expedition in Kentucky. But the journey goes terribly wrong when they're pursued by a strange breed of predator. The question for the horror critic becomes: Why do these women all die in the cave, since they seem to be innocent of any sin?
I watched the original unrated uncut version (DVD) of THE DESCENT this afternoon and evening, and then a couple of the featurettes. [It takes me a long time to watch these things because I'm stopping every two minutes to take notes and timings. You do not want to go to the movies with me, I'm always yelling at the projectionist to stop the film for a few. Audiences hate me. I once got kicked out of a theater for using the light of my iPhone to take notes.]
SIN AND METAPHORS
In the opening scene three women (Sarah, Beth and Juno) are white water rafting.
