Descent (2007) 7/10

Descent is the pet project of Rosario Dawson who also stars. Without her "star power" I doubt a film this extreme would have ever been made, let alone distributed.

Descent is about a young woman in college's plunge into hell after being raped by her boyfriend. She spends her summer in a dark dingy club listening to bad music and hanging out with worse people. She gets involved in the drug world and loses touch with herself and reality. Somehow she manages to pull it together to resume classes where she is confronted by the presence of her rapist. She then decides to "empower" herself and take revenge. And what a revenge it is.

I won't give away just how that revenge is exacted but lets just say the film earns its NC-17 rating.

The problem with the film is that many sequences are shot in extreme low light and it becomes very difficult to make out just what the hell we're trying to look at. This is increasingly frustrating as the film progresses but thankfully lightens up (though not thematically) towards the end. The film is also slowly paced but bearably so. The initial rape feels very intimate and realistic, hightening the revulsion factor. It is truly hard to witness. The relationships she develops after the event really don't make much sense and we never really see much of those "dark days." The film ends up feeling like a long setup and a long release but no middle act.

Overall Descent is a truly brutal film that brings to light the all too real college rape statistics. If you can deal with murky lighting and slow pacing, and want to test your mettle check this one out.

Overall 7/10