I saw The Descent in a theater in Pittsburgh while I was doing some training for my job. The theater that I saw it in had one of the most annoying seating patterns I have ever encountered. The seat all faced slightly east while the screen faced slightly west, so to see the screen straight on, you had to twist in your chair to look off to your left. If the film hadn’t captured my attention, I don’t think I could have stood to sit through the entire film. Fortunately The Descent was a very well made horror movie and I was captivated. The movie managed to give the audience the sence of being in a closed in dark space with these mysterious creatures roaming around. I loved it, and when the DVD came out, I went to Circuit City and bought a copy so that I could see the original, much darker ending that everyone was talking about. I bought it at Circuit City for two reasons. One it was on sale, and two there was an exclusive bonus disc packaged in the box with the movie. The next day I was in Wal-Mart and found out that they too had a bonus disc with The Descent and their edition was on sale as well. I really didn’t want to buy the same movie again, just to get the other bonus disc. I wasn’t even particularly keen to buy the R rated edition to supplement my unrated edition from Circuit City. I just wanted the other exclusive bonus disc. A long time later, I was prowling the DVD stacks at Wills and lo and behold I found the elusive Wal-Mart bonus disc. It was still shrink wrapped. I paid for it and took it back to add to the collection.
On Tuesday night my daughter’s boyfriend was visiting. I was called upon to pick up dinner and to drive said boyfriend back home. I had no problems with this as I am a good daddy, but it did make for a late start watching my movie. I was scouring titles trying to find something short when I noticed The Descent Wal=Mart exclusive. I decided to break the wrapping and pop it into the DVD player.
The Wal-Mart bonus disc is a mini-documentary/featurette called The Fine, Fearless And Feisty. It features an interview with writer/director Neil Marshall as well as the female leads. It includes some footage of the actors going through their training to be able to climb rock walls and starting to bond with each other as a group. I didn’t really find any breath-taking information on the disc, but it was interesting listening to Marshall describe the different way that men and women in the audience react to the scene where Sarah stabs Juno in the leg, effectively serving her up to the underground dwellers. The rest of the disc is pretty basic stereotypical commenting on the film. The girls got bruised up doing some of their own stunts. Wow, imagine that. I’m glad I got the DVD, and I still love the movie (a definite 3 1/2 horror movie), but there really wasn’t much content here. In the interest of giving Wal-Mart an exclusive DVD to promote with their copies of the movie, it seems the DVD makers simply pulled off one of the bonus features and stuck it on a disc by itself. It’s nothing special and I give it only a 2 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.
365 Days of DVDs 