Pulsating Descent

I saw a double feature today of "Pulse" and "The Descent." Two horror movies in one day and it's not even October!

I liked both movies, but I swear to God that lately I feel like I'm too old for the horror movies they're making now. I never noticed that the characters are always in their late teens/early twenties. When did I age out of that demographic? Actually, it happened about ten years ago, but I digress...I'm talking about the movies here.

"Pulse" was...well, it was okay. Could have been better, but okay. And by the way, Kristen Bell needs to tell her makeup people to lay off the gothy black eye shadow. The basic plot is that some computer geek hacker manages to break into a frequency that no one has ever known about before--probably because it is the frequency...OF THE DAMNED!

And of course, the hacker is, ironically, himself hacked and the frequency somehow gets out and, like spam from beyond the grave, starts popping up all over the Internet. There's something about not letting the ghosts look you in the eye because they tend to suck the "life" out of you--and apparently ghosts use a dial-up connection, because they move all herky-jerky and buzz in and out of visibility. Those infected by their one-on-one time with the ghosts start growing what looks like a black mold (although later in the film it's described as bruises...on Christina Milian it just looked like she'd fallen asleep with her eye make-up on) and some of them make greasy black stains on the walls (how is never really explained?) and some of them poof up into ashes. Again, it's not explained why.

I think that's what rubbed me wrong about this movie. Horror movies need a certain amount of exposition to tell the audience where the horror is actually originating from. "Pulse" didn't really bother to do that. Are the pasty white guys dead? Are they ghosts? Could they come through television lines or just the Internet and cell phone connections? Were the Luddites right all along to shun the electronic revolution?

And why did they film this movie in such a washed out palette of grays and blacks? What's with the red duct tape to seal up the windows and doors? Are the undead working for Homeland Defense? Why do all the college students live in what looks like abject squalor? (Because come on...you got maggots in your fridge but a $2000 computer system in your place?)

And my biggest question...did Stephen King happen to watch the Japanese version (Kairo, 2001) before he wrote Cell? Because there are a few remarkable similarities, plotwise. Not making any kind of accusations or anything. I'm just sayin'.

Anyway..."Pulse" was okay. Should have been better since Wes Craven co-wrote the script, but there wasn't anything really scary or disturbing about it. From the previews, I thought it would make me think twice about logging online or looking at unfamiliar websites, but...nothin'. Not bad, but not great. I give it an "Eh."

***

"The Descent" is being called a horror chick-flick, and that annoys me. Really, it does. It's the second film by Neil Marshall, director of the much-hailed werewolf movie "Dog Soldiers" (I've not yet been able to make myself sit through it for some reason; not criticizing it, I just haven't been in the mood for it), and it takes place in a cave in the Appalachian Mountains, USA.

Being an inhabitant of the Appalachian Mountains, USA, I was intrigued. What was THIS movie going to say about us? "Wrong Turn" had us painted as cannibal hillbillies, and "Cabin Fever" portrayed mountain people as being redneck morons, so I couldn't wait to see what "The Descent " would have to say about the inhabitants of this part of the country.

Oh...albino cannibal mole people. Riiiiight. Should've known.

What this movie did right was create a sense of claustrophobia. I'm not particularly touchy when it comes to small rooms or elevators, but something within me totally rebels against the idea of crawling headfirst into an opening maybe an inch wider than my shoulders. Underground. In the dark. With cannibal mole people running around. Maybe it's just me.

Lots of estrogen and "grrl power" in this one. Which is okay, because Marshall didn't stock the movie with castoffs from the WB but with actual women over the age of 25. For some reason, this group of plucky gals meet up every year to do some unbelievably macho activity that bonds them in ways that men can only imagine. One year they go white water rafting. One year they go mountain climbing. Stuff that you usually only see on Mountain Dew commercials.

So this year, after one of the members of the group suffers a tragic loss that haunts her, the gang decides to meet up in the indeterminate mountains of "Appalachia," which look, by the way, nothing like any mountains I've ever seen (probably because it was filmed in the UK). After a night of female bonding that reminded me of those old International Coffee commercials, they set off on a wild day of cavern exploring and...stuff.

And as a side note, apparently only really skinny, athletic women actually ever DO stuff like cave exploring, because they were squeezing into some tiny, tiny spaces. Why would anyone voluntarily do that? Is there some kind of correlation between cellulite and the ability to realize that crawling through tight caves is a bad idea?

Anyway, they soon learn that going into that particular cave system was a very, very bad idea. Monumentally bad. They're trapped two miles underground, they've lost some of their equipment, their batteries are going to die in a matter of hours, and oh yeah...those cannibal mole guys are hanging around.

I won't go into any particulars, because much of this movie's shock value is of the "oogy-boogy jump out of the shadows" nature, but if you're a seasoned horror movie fan, you'll recognize the pacing: a character is nervous, they hear something and jump, but it's nothing to be afraid of. Then they turn around and BOOM, we've achieved the "gotcha!" for that scene.

At a couple of points in this film, I halfway expected the women to pass the crew from "The Cave" in one of the passages and nod howdy ("Hey." "Hey." "We just passed some mutant bat creatures back thataway." "Really? We've seen some albino mole people." "Huh." "Yeah.")

But anyway...I've seen some comments that compare this movie to "Alien" and, well...not so much, really. Kinda, I guess. It's tense and it's gory enough (one scene involved thumbs and eyeballs and went on FOR-EV-ER). And there's one part that was like the lost scene from "Carrie White Goes Spelunking." This movie could even been seen as a feminist statement-- women are at the violent mercy of men who want to devour them--but that's pretentious and stupid. It's an action flick with six women instead of six guys, that's all.

Overall, I liked "The Descent" well enough. There's been some debate about the ending (the US version versus the UK version) and I have to say that I like the UK version better. The ending I saw today left me sitting there saying, "WHAT?" and feeling like something had been cut out. As it turns out, I was right. HA! I knew it.

I'd tell people to go see both "Pulse" and "The Descent," because we need to support horror movies and because neither movie was all that bad. If you know going into it that it's going to be an entertaining way to spend 90 or so minutes, then that's what you'll get from it.

And points to both films for having leading female characters and absolutely no gratuitous nudity. Boobs for the sake of boobs just irritates the hell out of me.

Enjoy the movies.