Metacritic reviews

The director of The Descent is savvy enough to suggest even more than he shows. And he's old-school enough to load up on glimpses of good, clean, gruesome gore.

The Descent sustains a level of intensity that most horror films can barely muster for five minutes.

Brutal, bloody, terrifying, astonishing... And so tense it'll leave you aching. The most significant Brit chiller since "28 Days Later."

This one is a creepy white-knuckle excursion into horror, where even the "boo!" moments are so well developed that they cause a jolt.

This is one of the scariest movies featuring female heroines since the "Alien" series, and what makes it uniquely scary is where these women are -- in tunnels two miles under ground -- when they realize they are not alone.

The chills and spills keep comin' to agreeable effect in Brit-made scarefest The Descent.

All in all, this is an accessible art house horror film whose trailer and premise do not do justice to the end result.

In the great B tradition, Marshall gets a lot out of nothing.

The Descent may not be everything you've heard, but man, it's also a lot of things you haven't.

Compulsively watchable, with its fair share of effective sledgehammer shocks; it just isn't very good.