Within 99 minutes, Neil Marshall didn't let me rest. The steel pipe flying over pierced and penetrated the broken joints of the body... These sharp shots cut in without me preparing.
Although from deceiving, trapping, being attacked, and finally resisting, "The Descent" also did not break out of the old routine of claustrophobic horror movies, but it is commendable that the conservative and indifferent British still stand by the objective person this time. To record darkness and fear from a different perspective. Hungry foragers hide in the dark cave. Selfishness, cowardice, suspicion, and fear continue to expand, spreading along the faint flames, reaching people's hearts. Compared with the cannibals waiting in the cave, the dormant darkness in human nature is what really disturbs the viewer's mind, and it is more eye-catching than the blood-spattering killing in the dark.
The "darkness" in "The Descent" is no longer just an explanation of the cave environment, but a truly chilling strangeness: the fear of the unknown and the elusive human nature. At the end of the film’s twists and turns, the "unknown" is pushed to a climax. Sarah, the last survivor, awakens from the illusion of her escape. The hot torches in front of her can't drive away the cold around her. She is still in cold, dark, and weak food. In her cave, betraying her companion did not bring her life, and in the future, she must face the unpredictable fate of life and death alone.
This film naturally reminds me of Plato’s metaphor in "Utopia". He said that those prisoners who have been trapped in the cave cannot see the real world outside the cave. They can only see some casts in the light of the fire. The dim images on the wall of the cave, and intoxicated by these images that are not reality itself. And those who walk out of the cave and discover the truth and return will be regarded as damn outsiders. This story wants to tell us too much, but at least one thing is clear. In an environment where cognition is still weak, the "essence" we admire is a restrained dominating machine that cannot be witnessed but is ubiquitous. It has unquestionable priority, it is superior, and it is always ahead of you. All kinds of derived "truths" sprout and grow around the essence, continue to the essence as always, or deviate from it limitedly. And the truth, God knows, whether it is far or near to us.
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