"Chicks with picks" is one of the descriptions being bandied around for Neil Marshall's horror movie The Descent. It follows six women on a caving expedition in the Appalachian mountains. It goes horribly awry when they become trapped in an unexplored underground network that's home to some particularly nasty beasties. Isolating a sextet of characters against a deadly foe seems to recall Marshall's earlier werewolf cult hit Dog Soldiers. But anyone expecting a repeat of that film's mix of action, comedy and horror is in for something of a shock.

"With Dog Soldiers, I wanted to make more of an entertaining romp of a movie," says Marshall. "It has a few shocks, it has a few laughs. This one dispenses with the laughs and goes straight for the throat. I deliberately didn't want to repeat the formula and make the same film twice. I knew I wanted to do a really scary film and terrify the life out of people."

Despite the familiar convention - a group picked off one at a time by ferocious and often unseen assailants - The Descent incorporates some unusual twists, particularly its all-female group of protagonists. "It was never an issue," maintains Marshall, when quizzed about potential reservations from financiers. "The fact that they're all women isn't an issue. The film isn't a chick flick, it isn't about girl issues, it's about survival issues."

A different ending for the US, eh?

I'm guessing that means:

[spoil]It gives the film a happy ending. In the European edit, the lead girl seemingly escapes the cave and flees in a car, only to cut to her waking up, still stuck in the cave with increasingly loud beastie noises swarming around her.[/spoil]

If so, that sucks a little, though I can cetainly see why they'd do it. I did leave the theatre feeling a bit morbidly depressed. But then, I got the same way when I left the last five Steve Martin flicks - and you bastard yanks don't edit those fuckers for my benefit.