Audition-style
revenge, Descent
tells the story of a promising young co-ed, Maya (Rosario Dawson), whose upward
academic trajectory is bumped off course in sudden, nasty fashion. After a week
of wooing by smooth-talking jock Jared (Chad Faust), Maya is date raped. She
then floats through summer in a glassy-eyed haze, shacking up with beefy drug
dealer Adrian (Marcus Patrick) before eventually returning to school as a
teacher’s assistant — a position that uncomfortably puts her back in contact
with Jared.

Working largely in tight, saturated close-ups, feature debut
writer-director Talia Lugacy gets around the need for large crowds of extras in
ways occasionally artful (the whispered run-through of a commencement ceremony)
but just as often awkward (a radio broadcast over an empty football stadium).
Lugacy takes her time with the material; this isn’t some tawdry version of a quick-plotted after-school special. Yet after a nice set-up, the middle of the film sags like the creaky floorboards of
a condemned house. You see a physical and emotional transformation in Maya —
she’s pallid and sullen — that more or less reinforces the arc of her acting
out. Yet there’s no correlative connection to this damage, largely the result
of Lugacy’s indulgence of far too many impressionistic musical sequences. It
all builds to a climax that’s both shocking and thought-provoking, but one that,
since it’s partially pegged to unknowable elements, only scratches the surface of the true, self-regenerating nature of victimization. Points for degree-of-difficulty effort,
then, trump execution, if only marginally. For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.