Neil Marshall acquired a loyal fanbase with his 2002 action/horror flick, "Dog Soldiers." Werewolves vaulted his career into the limelight. And now, bloodthirsty cave-dwelling creatures will ensure that it stays there. Marshall wrote and directed "The Descent," which bears many comparisons to Bruce Hunt's 2005 thriller "The Cave," only with an all-female cast and an overall better product. Marshall fans will not be disappointed in his newest endeavor - they'll be terrified.

The first hour of "The Descent" is an eerie, claustrophobic documentation of six friends' spelunking adventure gone wrong. The story centers around Sarah (Shauna McDonald, best known for her work in the British television series "Spooks"), who loses her husband and only child in the first five minutes of the film. A year after the accident, her friends rally the old group together for a caving expedition. But the venture goes sour when the exit collapses and the party finds out that one of their own tricked them into exploring an undiscovered site.

The six fumble their way through pitch-black passages, meeting life-threatening challenges and injuries. The first half of the film takes its time establishing an insipid friction in the group dynamic, becoming laborious in parts where the women struggle both emotionally and physically. Sarah is the first to notice little clues - noises echoing softly through crevices, evidence of previous spelunkers - that they are not alone in the cave.

With about a half hour left, we see a "Signs"-like glimpse of a creature from far away. The audience thinks that we'll have a breather before the next encounter, as the pace has been pretty slow up to this point, but no. Marshall's off and running. The next 30 minutes are a blur of intense, fleeting suspense met with unmitigated gore and horror.

"The Descent" revels in its gruesomeness. It's a celebration of tearing flesh, raspy screeching and moments of unexpected, grisly fight tactics. The women have no weapons with which to combat the predators, so they use everything from their climbing picks to dried out human bones to defend themselves. In what is possibly the goriest scene of the film, Sarah kills one of the creatures by jamming both of her thumbs into his eyes sockets and pushing down all the way to her palms.

Sarah, the character who began as the most demoralized and mousy, becomes Carrie on crack by the end of the film. She's a woman possessed by the instinct to survive, covered in blood from head to toe, kicking more ass than Lara Croft. The acting is subpar, especially on McDonald's part, but not in a way that takes away from the terror.

In most horror movies, the sexuality of the characters is played up to the extreme. And with a premise like this (six women trapped in a cave together), the viewer comes in expecting some shamelessly low-cut spelunking gear. But it doesn't happen. Each of the women is beautiful in the classical sense, and hardly sexualized at all.

"The Descent" is the most artful of the summer's neverending horror train. Marshall lulls his audience into a relaxed (albeit somewhat uneasy) state in the first half, then finds new, stomach-clenching ways to shock in the second. Horror aficionados will delight in the summer's goriest film and the viewers who are wary of thrillers will be pleased, as this is the kind of movie that terrifies in the moment but doesn't haunt you later.

Rating: Three and a half out of five stars

The Descent
At the Showcase and the Quality 16
Lions Gate