Bounding Into Halloween Night 10: It’s A Deep Dive Underground In ‘The Descent’ And ‘C.H.U.D.’
‘As above, so below.’ Last night showed the terrors lurking beyond the stars, and tonight we meet the ones that dwell beneath the earth. One is a more modern horror classic, and the other takes us back to the 80s for another deep dive. Pack a flashlight, and make sure to bring extra batteries. Because we are going underground, baby!
The Descent (2005)
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Horror was experiencing the start of a new renaissance back in the early aughts, after barely surviving the 90s. The French were doing their extreme thing, more people were becoming interested in fear flicks from the far east, and that left America to do terrible remakes of them all. In the UK, director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, Doomsday, Centurion) released The Descent, a movie that explores untread terrors which strike deep into the hearts of our darkest fears.
Besties Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), Juno (Natalie Mendoza), and Beth (Alex Reid) are three adrenaline junkies who don’t feel alive unless they’re trying to give Death a kiss on the cheek. They challenge nature and the elements by trying to overcome its most dangerous environments. These ladies might be considered thrill-seekers, and daredevils, but a trio of twits works just as well. Then tragedy befalls the group after a whitewater rafting trip when Sarah gets into a car accident that kills her daughter and husband.
A year passes, and Sarah is dragged out of her isolated shell of misery when Juno tells her of the cave-diving expedition in the Appalachian Mountains that she organized. The three friends reunite, and are joined by newcomers Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), Sam (MyAnna Buring), and Rebecca (Saskia Mulder).
They enter the cave, and the entrance collapses behind them shortly after. This gets five pairs of eyes pointed right at the one who led them to that place, Juno. She finally admits to taking them into a part of the cave system that hasn’t been explored, and that there are no known exits.
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Naturally, the group doesn’t take this very well. They’re already still pissed at her for bailing on everyone when Sarah got into the accident, but Juno only cares about discovering a new cave for posterity. The increasingly desperate search for a way out begins, and it quickly spirals into a complete nightmare. Sarah gets stuck while crawling through a tunnel in a scene that’s sure to cause a panic attack among any claustrophobic viewers, and Holly breaks her leg after falling into a precipice.
Just when things couldn’t get any worse for the suicidally reckless adventures, they make the cave’s inhabitants: A race of humans who have been mutated into blind, batlike creatures after countless generations of living in the dark, rocky abyss. These things will eat anything that gets trapped in the realm, and anyone too.
This is one of the best horror films from the first decade of this century, and it came at a time when everyone was trying to outdo each other with extreme content. The Descent goes deeper than flesh, bone, and blood to primal fears that are as old as mankind and shines a light on the dark side of evolution. Dive into the caves over on Prime.
Here’s the trailer:
C.H.U.D. (1984)
We are back! It is time to revisit the golden 80s for cult favorite, C.H.U.D., from 1984… A movie that drags us beneath the asphalt, and the concrete of Manhattan.
This subterranean realm is honeycombed with tunnels that go for thousands of miles in an insane, helter skelter maze of subways, sewer systems, steam pipes and tunnels that have been in place for so long their original purpose has been forgotten over the decades.
However, the one thing that hasn’t been lost is the rumor of things that dwell down in the sewers. Something that’s dismissed as urban legend until the murders starts occurring on the Lower East Side.
George Cooper (John Heard) is a photographer who was once the talk of the fashion world, but walked away from fame, and success to live the life of a nobody with his girlfriend, Lauren (Kim Greist), but that doesn’t mean that he hung up his camera. George’s latest passion project is covering New York’s homeless population that live in the tunnels.
Police Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) is also poking the sewers, but for different reasons. He’s investigating the string disappearances that have been linked to the underworld, and to the bottom of these abductions. Driving him is the fact that one of the missing persons is his wife (whose fate is what opens the movie), and he’s not going to like how that turns out for him.
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Captain Bosch talks to A.J. “The Reverend” Shepherd (Daniel Stern), who runs the local homeless shelter. A.J. is convinced that the disappearances are part of a massive government cover-up, and claims to have proof of this conspiracy. It’s easy to dismiss as “crazy”, but then Bosch’s superiors start acting very suspect about the entire situation, and it becomes obvious that they know more than they’re letting on.
The truth is they’re covering for creatures that were once human, but were mutated after being exposed to toxic waste. Now, these things live in the sewers, and feast on the flesh of any human who trespasses or gets too close to a manhole. It is up to George and A.J. to infiltrate and put a stop to the “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers”.
Whereas the last movie strikes the nerves of viewers in complete earnestness, this one is pure B-movie fun. It harkens back to the magical days of midnight double features with low-budget slop that’s blissfully free of pretension, and plot.
Is the film well made? Meh. Are there any breakthrough acting performances? Hell no! But that’s not why people like this movie. They love the violence, freaky-looking mutants, and the movie’s charming cheesiness. C.H.U.D. can be found down in the sewers of TUBI.
Here’s the trailer:
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