The Cave & The Descent

The Cave (2005) & The Descent (2006): Rarely have two movies with such similar plotlines been released so close together. Both are about spelunkers trapped in caves with strange creatures looking to digest them. Both have good photography with “Cave” having some really fine underwater cave swimming scenes and “Descent” having some very unusual lighting effects from the various types of lightning used by the doomed spelunkers. ‘Cave’ is about a group of underwater experts investigating a cave filled with water while ‘Descent’ is about a group of women friends who go exploring a cave for fun. Naturally both sets of cave croutons get trapped inside and must find an alternate way out. Both caves appear to be inhabited by nasties with above average appetites. Both sets of nasties are explained by evolutionary processes, one ultra high speed via a virus while the other appears more of a natural type. What you get is a bunch of blind albino humanoids with teeth. ‘Cave’s’ are more mutated and look like a cross between a bleached Alien, the Predator (bleached), and a Gargoyle while ‘Descent’s are just bleached blind hairless bipeds with sharp teeth.
The ‘Cave’ victims’ dilemma is that their leader appears to know the way out but he also may be mutating into one of the things currently trying to eat them. The gals in ‘Descent’ find out their leader took them into another cave than the one they registered to go into and no one will be looking for them. One of the best scenes occurs in ‘Descent’ when one gal is separated from the group and has no light save from her video camera and all you can see is through the viewing screen of her camera. Both movies are pretty well done for this type of story and should keep you absorbed. The Cave is rated PG-13 and The Descent is unrated but would probably also run in the PG-13 area for massive claustrophobia, unneeded explosions, non-helpful tectonic shifting, massive biting, excessive hungry blind albino things without food stamps, multiple bone piles, mutated fish, and for the flying flapping blind toothy evolutionary creature that just couldn’t have developed into something that ugly.