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Descent (2007)

tomatometer

36

Average Rating: 4.9/10
Reviews Counted: 33
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 21

Descent has the potential to make a statement about sexual violence, but falls flat by focusing on revenge rather than Rosario Dawson's emotional state.

50

Average Rating: 5.2/10
Critic Reviews: 12
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 6

Descent has the potential to make a statement about sexual violence, but falls flat by focusing on revenge rather than Rosario Dawson's emotional state.

audience

40

liked it
Average Rating: 2.8/5
User Ratings: 3,882

My Rating

Movie Info

An act of violence throws a young woman's life into disarray in this independent drama, the first feature from director Talia Lugacy. Maya (Rosario Dawson) is a bright and ambitious college student who tries to balance a social life with her busy academic schedule. One night, Maya and some friends attend a house party largely populated by drunken frat boys. Maya is appalled by their uncouth behavior and disrespect for the female guests, and when a guy named Jared (Chad Faust) bluntly hits on

Feb 5, 2008

City Lights Pictures

All Critics (35) | Top Critics (12) | Fresh (14) | Rotten (23) | DVD (7)

It's been a while since we saw a demagogic feminist exploitation revenge drama, and Descent, while top-heavy with 'agenda,' is shrewdly done.

August 15, 2007 Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly | Comment
Entertainment Weekly
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Look-at-me-I'm-a-filmmaker photography, pacing that has all the thrills of waiting in line at the post office and an utterly predictable plot combine to make the movie even worse than the hacky chick revenge fantasy now showing on channel 186 of your box.

August 10, 2007 Full Review Source: New York Post | Comment
New York Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

No moviegoer has done anything to deserve the images that director Talia Lugacy would throw in their face.

August 10, 2007 Full Review Source: New York Daily News | Comment
New York Daily News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

[Dramatizes] the experience and the psychological aftermath of rape with a vividness I've never seen in an American film.

August 10, 2007 Comment
New York Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It's indie provocation trapped between shock and blah.

August 9, 2007 Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times | Comment
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It's a lot like a '70s exploitation movie, with its determination to seduce and shock the viewer with alternating currents of electrical stimulus, and its weird combination of arty arch-decadence and neo-Victorian moralizing.

August 9, 2007 Full Review Source: Salon.com | Comment
Salon.com
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A claustrophobic psychological thriller guaranteed to keep you guessing all the way until the shocking conclusion.

January 25, 2008 Full Review Source: NewsBlaze | Comment
NewsBlaze

Rape and the pornography of revenge is less than sweet, to say the least, in particular for the audience.

November 11, 2007 Full Review Source: NewsBlaze | Comment
NewsBlaze

Revenge is less than sweet, to say the least, in particular for the audience, veering between sickening and pathetically pornographic.

November 11, 2007 Full Review Source: NewsBlaze | Comment
NewsBlaze

Dawson, armed not with a whole lot of dialogue but her endlessly eloquent face, makes each note of the character's journey pierce, whether with pain or ecstasy.

August 19, 2007 Full Review Source: TheMovieReport.com | Comment
TheMovieReport.com

Sludgy and slack [...] pointlessly vague and abstruse.

August 15, 2007 Full Review Source: Film Journal International | Comment
Film Journal International

Though a clearly gifted new filmmaker, Lugacy doesn't get a handle on the combustible material, and she gets scalded in the process.

August 14, 2007 Full Review Source: AV Club | Comment
AV Club

Ugliness of story, character and technique cannot hold a movie audience and do more harm than good towards seeking a professed corrective.

August 12, 2007 Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews | Comment
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

A hollow fabrication in the pursuit of someone's sick idea of redemption. I didn't pay to see it... but I want my wasted time back.

August 11, 2007 Full Review Source: Cinema Signals | Comment
Cinema Signals
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Descent

Plot Spoilers Necessarily Throughout This Review I saw this movie by accident, thinking I had downloaded "The Descent", the horror movie about creatures attacking a group of cave climbers/campers who are all college age girls. So even through, the first rape scene, I thought, this is just another crappy B

April 28, 2008
Stinger839

Super Reviewer

Yawn! Bloody dull and sicko R-rated drama I ever saw about the exact revenge of a date-raped co-ed. I couldn't stand and watch the final scene of co-ed's revenge upon her attacker.

December 29, 2008
deano
Dean McKenna

Super Reviewer

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