The Last Descent

Way too Many flashbacks. Took up a third to half the film. Film too long. Ending rubbish.

And this can't all be blamed on being a low budget film. Cccc ccc.

So let's get this out of the way: it's not a high-quality movie. So don't watch it if you're interested in skillful filmmaking. Acting not great, writing not great, etc.

What it *is* is the only available cinematic retelling of the Nutty Putty Cave tragedy. So if you're interested in that sort of thing, you probably want to watch it. It helped me get the human element in this instead of just being horrified by online diagrams of a guy stuck forever upside down in a hole.

I consider myself a mini-expert on the event after having read everything I can find on it. There are inaccuracies in this movie, important details they left out on purpose, lots of romanticizing (probably for the sake of the surviving family), a ton of sappy dream sequence filler as an artistic liberty, an inordinate focus on John's courtship with his wife, and they don't even show his death from a third-person POV and the closing off of the cave. They totally gloss over the death part and don't even show the aftermath.

In the end this feels like a B movie commissioned by his friends as a gift to his surviving family, so they can memorialize him in a touching light. And I get that, and it's very sweet.

But if you're a Nutty Putty armchair scholar, you probably wanted something with more substance and less fluff.

This movie is inspired by the true story of John Jones. I was unfamiliar with his story of getting stuck in a narrow passageway while caving with his brother in 2009. This movie is a sweet, sad, and surprisingly romantic story. It isn't extremely exciting or entertaining but it is an emotional movie. My wife watched less than 10 minutes with me and still left the room crying. The movie is obviously low budget and some of the acting is not great. But considering what it has to work with, some things are done really well. I'm a little ambivalent about movies where one person is stuck in one spot throughout the whole movie. It's a challenge to keep such movies from getting tiresome. This movie keeps things interesting enough by jumping around between the rescuers above ground, John's situation inside the cave, and the romantic flashbacks with John and his wife. There is also a mysterious figure that keeps popping up in John's hallucinations which creates a little mystery. Some will appreciate this sweet story while others will find it to be too slow. What I appreciated most was the honest dialogue between John and the rescuers who stayed by his side. John felt just like the kind of family man we know from our own lives. He was very relatable which made this story even more emotional.

Based on a true story that happened in 2009, this movie 'The Last Decent' is similar to another movie called "147 Hours" concerning Aron Ralston, but in this film a caver or Spelunker named John Jones who is accompanied by his long-suffering brother Josh, go to Utah to begin exploring an unmapped section of what is called Nutty Putty Cave and Josh gets out safely, but John becomes stuck upside down 150 feet underground. Actor Chadwick Hopson who plays John Jones, is such an emotional character and you feel his overwhelming sense of dread and sadness. The rescue efforts to bring John out to of the hole to be re-united with his loving wife Emily (played remarkably by Alexis Johnson) and the whole scene between John and Aaron(Landon Henneman), is imprinted in your mind. There's a few scenes with Susie (Jyllian Petrie) that are truly heart felt and the Stock footage of scenes from the actual newscast interspersed in the movie make you feel the impact of what actually happened back then. Aaron, and John's interaction wrench your heart. I'm still reeling from this. That's all I can reveal! Please watch this!

This film gave me anxiety, had to watch it after reading his story, being stuck is bad enough but upside down, why would you even attempt this