If the combined praise of the assembled horror-blog cognoscenti didn’t convince you that The Descent would be a must-own DVD upon its post-Christmas release, allow me to add one more element in its favor: the accompanying making-of documentary. It’s every bit as comprehensive and well-edited as one might hope, but the most exciting thing about it for me–besides the fact that everyone, from writer/director Neil Marshall on down, seemed so nice–is that the filmmakers (and actors) were just as steeped in the horror canon as I thought they were. They all seem so unpretentiously in love with horror and with making horror movies, which is delightful. All the references/influences get called out–Alien, The Shining, The Blair Witch Project, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, An American Werewolf in London, Deliverance, The Thing, Nosferatu, The Lord of the Rings…everything I saw and loved in the film was indeed intended to be there. Plus, there’s a whole separate mini-doc on the film’s two different endings, in which Marshall compares the two approaches, explains why the ending was changed for the U.S. release, reveals which was the original intention and which he ultimately prefers, and touches on a fascinating distinction between a hopeless ending and a cruelly hopeless ending. Of course that really revved my engine, and I’d imagine that if you’re reading this blog, it’ll rev yours too.

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