“A college co-ed is brutally raped and struggles alone to rebuild her life.” Now that sounds like entertainment, right?
The above logline goes along with the film titled: Descent. Descent was directed by Talia Lugacy and stars Roasario Dawson. Critical blurbs to be found about the film include people comparing it to Taxi Driver with Robert De Niro, stating that Rosario Dawson put sin a mesmerizing performance. Indeed it is a psychological drama, however that sort of depth and range is not actually found within it.
Essentially, if I were to sum up Descent I would say the meat and potatoes of it is a brutal rape scene. The scene is meant to be shocking and uncomfortable, which for many just the thought is. However, it is way too long a scene that more or less focuses on a close up of Rosario’s face as she is being victimized. I was watching the scene and just wondering, is this ever going to end?
The premise, besides that logline is that Rosario is a fairly normal girl with a good head on her shoulders. However, she ends up trusting a guy who right off the bat to the viewer comes off as a stalker. They eventually hook up privately and he doesn’t think no means no and rapes her. After this she goes into a downward spiral of, um, hanging out at a club? At the club she lets a dude kiss her feet and then she seems to befriend a modern pimp like character who will circle back around in the plot of things to appear in the ending. What I expected was a film going into detail chronicling this girl’s psychological issues and such. What you get is a brushed over, not so in-depth, you are just expected to accept she is supposedly got some issues and wonder whether or not she will get some sort of twisted revenge against her attacker type of thing. There is nothing to the movie really, no real acting, and no real story: just real boringness. Then when all else fails it, the film just goes into a second rape scene.
The picture quality of the film I guess is actually trying to recreate some sort of 70’s cinema film and isn’t exactly eye pleasing either. Descent would be low on my recommendation list, so low it wouldn’t even be on it. It is not compelling, entertaining, erotic, or worthwhile in any other way shape or form.
