Descent (Original 'NC-17' Version) From:Rosario Dawson , Tracie Thoms , Alex Reid , Oliver Milburn , Wilson Jermaine Heredia , City Lights Home Entertainment ,
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: NC-17
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0897246001164
Format: Anamorphic
Format: Closed-captioned
Format: Color
Format: Dolby
Format: DVD-Video
Format: NTSC
Format: Surround Sound
Format: Widescreen
Label: City Lights Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: City Lights Home Entertainment
Number Of Items: 1
Packaged Height: 58 hundredths-inches
Packaged Length: 710 hundredths-inches
Packaged Weight: 18 hundredths-pounds
Packaged Width: 542 hundredths-inches
Publisher: City Lights Home Entertainment
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-02-05
Running Time: 104 minutes
Studio: City Lights Home Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Product Description:
Maya (Rosario Dawson) is like many other college coeds, booksmart yet shy, curious about sex, yet scared to let herself go. One night she meets Jared (played by Chad Faust). When their courtship turns from romantic to horrific in a single violent act, Maya's world is ripped inside-out. Shutting out everyone in her life, Maya loses herself to a dark throbbing underworld of experimentation. Lured by club DJ Adrian (Marcus Patrick), she awakens to a cold and vicious new strength. But will Maya's downward spiral consume and destroy her - or will she be saved by its power? (Edited R-Rated version also availble on DVD).
Customer Reviews:
Ouch, 2008-11-17
Descent has got to be one of the slowest movies I've ever seen, but maybe that gives it some extra power it might not have had without those incredibly long drawn out medium shots. Maya is a college student who's looking for love, and when she meets ballplayer Jared at a party she's intrigued; he really holds her attention. He has the surface charm that sociopaths learn to mimic from close observation of normal people, but how's a girl supposed to know that? When she crosses the threshold into his apartment, and sees his trashed living room, she asks if something happened, but he doesn't reply directly, just gives her a heaping glass of wine and tells her to bring it upstairs. That messy living room should have told her to just go home when the getting was good, but Maya is a bit of a naïf and ignores the signs that the audience never does.
Rosario Dawson is beautiful and talented, and her portrayal of Maya both before and after Jared attacks her is nothing short of breathtaking, but the problem is that there really isn't anything for her to play with. There are some amusing scenes set in the high-fashion boutique Maya takes a job in, where a snooty Sloane Ranger teaches her how to fold expensive blouses for better presentation ("loose--give them some air"), but by this time Maya is incapable of doing anything but looking woebegone and numb. About this time it dawned on me where I had seen this character arc before--in Rent, of course, in which Rosario Dawson played Mimi, first as a warm, loving spirit, then as a drugged out zombie with zero emotional range. I have to say that Rent did it better, and maybe Descent with musical numbers would have made it more lively. I don't know. The whole film is set up solely to deliver to Jared what he has laid on Maya, and the cat and mouse game she plays with him is suspenseful up to a point.
This is the second film I've seen in a month's time in which the superjock guy is humbled by the invasion of his most private of parts. (The last was "Playroom.") This must be a trend in the making, perhaps inspired by what happened to Seann William Scott and his nurse in "Road Trip." And of course, to way back when, the notorious Rusty Godowsky rape scene in "Myra Breckinridge." That film was a mess, but it had more spirit than the listless, if well-meant, "Descent."
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