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Dec. 4th, 2007 12:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSo I sat down to watch another Torchwood with the commentary on
then the TV changed channels to watch something I had at some point decided looked interesting.
So I watched 'The Descent'.
... after it finished I went back and watched Torchwood to kind of decompress. Cause I was thinking, by this point? Countrycide would be less creepy.
I mean, watching it on TV was not ideal. Every time it reached shoulders-around-ears levels of tense there was another bloody commercial break. Should have wrecked the tension. But I think I'd be a wreck if it hadn't had the breaks, so that works out.
On the one hand for a while in the middle I was vaguely disappointed there were actual monsters, because it was shaping up to be all psychological and emotional and personal. And then it managed to be psychological and emotional and personal while fighting monsters, and that just rules.
I liked that the opening sequence tells you what you're in for. There's moments that aren't strict realism, aren't meant to be the external world per se, and we see things from that one woman's point of view and they're maybe not what the rest of her world is seeing... and then she's the one that sees the monsters first. And we get the slow reveal, where it's a shadow and then a sound and a shape in the distance and it's all just her. But then when they use the nightvision on the camera it's like they explode into consensus reality, like the technology... verifies isn't the word I'm looking for. Authenticates? Authorises? Gah, one of them words. So that was just awesome. And throughout it's only her pov that slips into probably-not-real, yet repeatedly it does so in ways that we don't necessarily notice until it jolts us back to a reset version. And even then there's a dream-within-a-dream feel, or rather nightmare in nightmare. And then there's how she gets split up from them, so her-real is the only one we have to work with, and how it isn't the thing where they go 'lets split up' and be stupid but rather just a reaction and it makes sense.
Nobody does the stupid. Well, one does the hurrying too fast and you can see it coming that it is stupid, but she's set up to be that person, the one that pushes too hard, so it's like character payoff. And then she breaks her leg and eeeeew that's excessively medical, but again, you are warned. For right then is when it goes from a problem to a horror movie, when the one that sees things wanders off from that crisis into a whole other.
And the thing I loved most - the thing that kept me watching after the first vague interest - was that it's all women. I realise a horror movie has some inherent drawbacks for that setup, since you can be pretty sure it's either all or almost all dead women walking, but I've been watching so much stuff lately where there's The Girl surrounded by and interacting with guys and I'm *sick* of it. And this managed to have a half a dozen fully differentiated female characters with relationships that looked like we were picking up and joining them in the middle. I hadn't realised how utterly *starved* for that I was until I watched this. Why isn't there more of that?
And then it did some lovely things with the Bad Things In The Dark. Because if you've got a half dozen women being put in danger by monsters, you pretty much think they're boy monsters. You can read it as a women threatened by men thing. Blah.
But that's where the tensions within the group kicked in, and the ways the characters fractured, all different ways that seemed perfectly appropriate given their earlier setup, and suddenly the group is split into little pairs and splinters, and they're a danger to each other.
And right after that you meet a clearly female Bad Thing, and one of the characters we've followed in totally goes primal and kills her. And the threat just isn't that simple any more.
And so it comes down to two survivors, the one who lost her husband at the start and the one who she has found out down here was shagging her husband. And oh yeah, accidentally killed her best friend. And lied about it. And they've been fighting the Bad Things, but they're all dead, so they're facing off with an ice ax each. And there's a loooooooong moment, a very long moment, where they just look at each other, and you have to wonder, which choice is she going to make? And the character could go either way, cause we've seen enough of her to know that but not enough to quite guess... So it comes down to, what kind of film is it?
And then it's *that* kind of film, and you think it's all over... and then you think it again, again, again, until the ending drags out enough you're just never going to be quite sure where she is, if she's trapped in her head or in the cave or what, and that's just... I love that. It's absolutely ghastly. It's what horror movies are for.
I bet there's an American version that takes the doubt out and just lets someone live.
*looks it up on Wiki*
Yup.
*sigh*
I'd heard there was an alternate ending. So it kind of had to be that. But really, point missed much?
I mean even if she gets out, she's just killed someone, so is that a happy ending? Not so very.
And then she's probably just stuck in the cave imagining she got out or imagining she can see her daughter, but I like the idea she's out in the car and having killed someone she can't get out in her head.
Very cool, very creepy, very dark... in several senses. None of that namby pamby light-you-see-the-dark-by, just some serious dark with red flarelight or green coldlight glowsticks or sometimes just spots from their helmet lights. All kinds of fun.
So now I guess I want to write or see something with lots of women that live.
... I'm pretty much coming up 'Charmed', and I gave up on that quite some time ago...
Guess there's always Buffy.
then the TV changed channels to watch something I had at some point decided looked interesting.
So I watched 'The Descent'.
... after it finished I went back and watched Torchwood to kind of decompress. Cause I was thinking, by this point? Countrycide would be less creepy.
I mean, watching it on TV was not ideal. Every time it reached shoulders-around-ears levels of tense there was another bloody commercial break. Should have wrecked the tension. But I think I'd be a wreck if it hadn't had the breaks, so that works out.
On the one hand for a while in the middle I was vaguely disappointed there were actual monsters, because it was shaping up to be all psychological and emotional and personal. And then it managed to be psychological and emotional and personal while fighting monsters, and that just rules.
I liked that the opening sequence tells you what you're in for. There's moments that aren't strict realism, aren't meant to be the external world per se, and we see things from that one woman's point of view and they're maybe not what the rest of her world is seeing... and then she's the one that sees the monsters first. And we get the slow reveal, where it's a shadow and then a sound and a shape in the distance and it's all just her. But then when they use the nightvision on the camera it's like they explode into consensus reality, like the technology... verifies isn't the word I'm looking for. Authenticates? Authorises? Gah, one of them words. So that was just awesome. And throughout it's only her pov that slips into probably-not-real, yet repeatedly it does so in ways that we don't necessarily notice until it jolts us back to a reset version. And even then there's a dream-within-a-dream feel, or rather nightmare in nightmare. And then there's how she gets split up from them, so her-real is the only one we have to work with, and how it isn't the thing where they go 'lets split up' and be stupid but rather just a reaction and it makes sense.
Nobody does the stupid. Well, one does the hurrying too fast and you can see it coming that it is stupid, but she's set up to be that person, the one that pushes too hard, so it's like character payoff. And then she breaks her leg and eeeeew that's excessively medical, but again, you are warned. For right then is when it goes from a problem to a horror movie, when the one that sees things wanders off from that crisis into a whole other.
And the thing I loved most - the thing that kept me watching after the first vague interest - was that it's all women. I realise a horror movie has some inherent drawbacks for that setup, since you can be pretty sure it's either all or almost all dead women walking, but I've been watching so much stuff lately where there's The Girl surrounded by and interacting with guys and I'm *sick* of it. And this managed to have a half a dozen fully differentiated female characters with relationships that looked like we were picking up and joining them in the middle. I hadn't realised how utterly *starved* for that I was until I watched this. Why isn't there more of that?
And then it did some lovely things with the Bad Things In The Dark. Because if you've got a half dozen women being put in danger by monsters, you pretty much think they're boy monsters. You can read it as a women threatened by men thing. Blah.
But that's where the tensions within the group kicked in, and the ways the characters fractured, all different ways that seemed perfectly appropriate given their earlier setup, and suddenly the group is split into little pairs and splinters, and they're a danger to each other.
And right after that you meet a clearly female Bad Thing, and one of the characters we've followed in totally goes primal and kills her. And the threat just isn't that simple any more.
And so it comes down to two survivors, the one who lost her husband at the start and the one who she has found out down here was shagging her husband. And oh yeah, accidentally killed her best friend. And lied about it. And they've been fighting the Bad Things, but they're all dead, so they're facing off with an ice ax each. And there's a loooooooong moment, a very long moment, where they just look at each other, and you have to wonder, which choice is she going to make? And the character could go either way, cause we've seen enough of her to know that but not enough to quite guess... So it comes down to, what kind of film is it?
And then it's *that* kind of film, and you think it's all over... and then you think it again, again, again, until the ending drags out enough you're just never going to be quite sure where she is, if she's trapped in her head or in the cave or what, and that's just... I love that. It's absolutely ghastly. It's what horror movies are for.
I bet there's an American version that takes the doubt out and just lets someone live.
*looks it up on Wiki*
Yup.
*sigh*
I'd heard there was an alternate ending. So it kind of had to be that. But really, point missed much?
I mean even if she gets out, she's just killed someone, so is that a happy ending? Not so very.
And then she's probably just stuck in the cave imagining she got out or imagining she can see her daughter, but I like the idea she's out in the car and having killed someone she can't get out in her head.
Very cool, very creepy, very dark... in several senses. None of that namby pamby light-you-see-the-dark-by, just some serious dark with red flarelight or green coldlight glowsticks or sometimes just spots from their helmet lights. All kinds of fun.
So now I guess I want to write or see something with lots of women that live.
... I'm pretty much coming up 'Charmed', and I gave up on that quite some time ago...
Guess there's always Buffy.
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Date: 2007-12-04 01:20 am (UTC)I'm a bit too easily claustraphobic even just watching situations like that, so I couldn't breathe from the very beginning of it all XD But yeah, crazy good movie with such realistic and not stereotypical twists or turns.