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Reviews Counted:26
Fresh:6
Rotten:20
Average Rating:4.3/10
Consensus: 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.
Theatrical Release:Aug 10, 2007 Limited
Synopsis: Rosario Dawson produces and stars in DESCENT, a project directed by her real-life friend Talia Lugacy, and one close to the actress's heart. A very dark film, DESCENT assures viewers from the very... [More]
Starring: Rosario Dawson, Chad Faust, Vanessa Ferlito, Wilson Jermaine Heredia
Director: Talia Lugacy
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.
Top CriticEach section of the film is a heady and artful consideration of Maya's torment, which Dawson conveys as a wounded puzzle of shame and denial.
Rosario Dawson exhibits a previously unseen range, here, more than meeting the challenge of the most emotionally-demanding role of her career.
[Dramatizes] the experience and the psychological aftermath of rape with a vividness I’ve never seen in an American film.
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.
It's been a while since we saw a demagogic feminist exploitation revenge drama, and Descent, while top-heavy with 'agenda,' is shrewdly done.
Top CriticDescent is the head-slappingly awful picture that turns rape into a comedy.
Apart from its obvious exploitation element and disjointed second act, the movie achieves a cool momentum by sheer force of the intimate power play that takes place over the course of a slow build-up toward its sex-schock finale.
Ugliness of story, character and technique cannot hold a movie audience and do more harm than good towards seeking a professed corrective.
A well-acted trifle straining to be a hard-hitting morality play.
Top CriticSludgy and slack [...] pointlessly vague and abstruse.
No moviegoer has done anything to deserve the images that director Talia Lugacy would throw in their face.
Top CriticClick to read the article
[Rosario Dawson] could have provided a 100-minute closeup and revealed more about human nature and anguish than all of Descent.
Top CriticThe imbalances of power that make up the ugly reality of sexual violence deserve a deeper examination than [this] Venus-flytrap endings -- good enough for Straw Dogs, but not 35 years later.
The movie is just a vicious, pathetic excuse for Lugacy to live out her own twisted hate-fantasies on the big screen.
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.
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.
Top CriticThere's too much arty writhing and too little concrete character development.
There's a potentially groundbreaking story lurking somewhere in Descent, but it stops at the revenge, thereby robbing us of what might have been a vitally important moviegoing experience.
October 17, 2007:
Descent self-destructs into the pornography of revenge, as sympathy for a date rape victim fails to remain established amid a kind of shifting brutality among the various characters. 
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August 09, 2007:
Critical Consensus: Rush Hour 3 Runs On Fumes; Stardust Shines; Daddy Day Camp Is Laugh-Free
This week at the movies, we've got wacky cops (Rush Hour 3, starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker), fairy tales (Stardust, starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer), the... More...
August 07, 2007:
A claustrophobic psychological thriller which marks the impressive writing/directorial debut of Talia Lugacy who has imbued her heroine with an inscrutability which keeps the viewer guessing and makes the denouement that much more shocking a reveal.
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August 04, 2007:
Trailer & Poster review
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