The Descent (2005) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 17

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The only way out, is through.

The Descent is a thrilling and chilling frightfest that will give the viewer numerous nightmare inducing moments. But it will also leave indelible psychological scarring from the deeply troubled relationship shared by the lead characters.

Before Viewing

The trailer presents a group of six girls going on a spelunking expedition in a deep cave. They (of course) find more than they were bargaining for. Some creature, or creatures live in the cave underground, and they will need all their wits to survive, The Descent.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

On the way home from a whitewater rafting trip with her two best friends Juno (Natalie Mendoza) and Beth (Alex Reid), Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) is involved in an auto accident where both her husband Paul (Oliver Milburn) and young daughter Jessica (Molly Kayll) are killed. One year later Sarah comes to a cabin in the Chatooga National Park, part of the Appalachian Mountains, and meets up with Juno and Beth for another adventure. They are joined by Juno’s “protégé” Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), and sisters Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) and Sam (MyAnna Buring).

Even after a year, Sarah is plagued by recurring dreams of the accident and her daughter with a birthday cake and candles. After an evening of getting to know each other better, the women set off for Boreham Caves–which Holly thinks is too easy to climb. They arrive at an unmarked hole in the ground, the entrance, while Juno leaves the guidebook in the car. They begin their descent into the cave as Sarah notices some strange, claw-like marks on a rock as well as a partially eaten elk. Inside the cave the six women are awed by its beauty and size.

After a quick break for food, they look for the next passageway. Holly takes point on an incredibly narrow tunnel that they need to crawl through. Sarah brings up the rear, but gets stuck with her gear. Juno helps her out and talks her through it as part of the ceiling collapses, causing them to lose some of their gear and extra ropes. As the group discusses next steps, and worries about how to get out, it is revealed that Juno lied about their location. They are not in Boreham Caves, but a new system that is undiscovered. A cave that they can lend their name to once they make it out.

Sarah sees something in the back of the chamber briefly, but her friends think she is just having some PTSD. Pushing forward they come to a chasm which they must traverse with limited rope and supplies. Rebecca sets up the line, encountering an old piton already in the ceiling of this supposed undiscovered cave. As Juno comes across last, collecting the supplies, she slips and Rebecca’s hand is severely injured in an attempt to keep her from falling. They find an ancient cave painting indicating a second entrance (or exit). Holly sees daylight (but actually phosphorescent rock) and races ahead, only to fall into hole and break her leg.They create a makeshift splint for Holly. Sarah finds an old miner’s hat and still no one believes her.

As they continue moving forward, a strange, pale, humanoid creature attacks them, taking Holly. Juno follows and kills the creature (identified in the credits as a Crawler), but accidentally impales Beth through the throat with her pickaxe, believing she is another monster. Beth is not completely dead and asks Juno to stay, but she leaves in horror at what she’s done. Sarah is separated from the group discovering an ossuary with a pit of blood. She is attacked by several more creatures and violently kills them all. She finds Beth, who is still alive and tells her not to trust Juno before giving Sarah a pendant she pulled off Juno. Sarah euthanizes Beth at her request.

Juno reunites with Rebecca and Sam. The three try to head across another chasm, but Sam has her throat torn out by a crawler and Rebecca is dragged away. Sarah appears, covered in blood, and saves Juno before revealing that she knows of Juno’s affair with Paul. The pendant Beth handed her said “Love Each Day,” Paul’s catch phrase. As a horde of creatures come for them, Sarah puts an axe into Juno’s leg, leaving her for the Crawlers. Sarah climbs a mountain of bone to escape the cave, hops into one of their trucks and speeds off. She is shocked to see a bloody Juno in the seat next to her. Sarah snaps back to reality, still trapped inside the cave as a large horde of Crawlers come for her.

“The worst thing that could’ve happened to you has already happened. Okay? And you’re still here. This is just a poxy cave. And there’s nothing left to be afraid of.” – Juno

The horror in The Descent is less about the monsters in the underground cave, and more about the evils visited upon others within a group of friends. And while the moments with the creatures have definite scary parts, the feeling that remains after the film is a despair at the human interactions, specifically with Juno and Sarah. The Descent also layers its theme within the title. It’s not only a descent into the Earth, but a descent into madness and baser human instinct.

Director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers and the 2019 Hellboy reboot) creates a slow burn and suspenseful film that intersperses tense moments with shocking jump scares. After the unexpected car crash, where Paul is skewered by a metal pipe, Marshall includes a couple other jump scares to prime the viewer for the unusually long build up to the reveal of the Crawlers. The first is one of Sarah’s dreams, where it appears she has awoken in the cabin and is staring out the window. Suddenly a metal pipe is thrust through the window into her with a loud noise, just as she awakens for real. There are a couple other “boo” moments as Juno pops into frame while in the cave to spook Sarah. This is amongst the setup of something else being in the cave. Small clues pique the interest of the viewer, like the dead elk, bloody claw marks, and shadows that seem to disappear.

Once the Crawlers appear, the level of intensity cranks up and stays up. It begins with a brief shot of the pale creature on a night vision setting on the video camera. The contrast with the darkness of the cave really makes the monster pop visually, and with an appropriate scary noise too. These bat-like troglodytes have speed, claws allowing them to walk on ceilings, and radar sense to allow them to see in the pitch darkness. Some of the characters hypothesize that they have evolved hidden in this cave over thousands of years, seeking out animals and other explorers that wander too close. It takes the idea of horror films where the city folks encounter some strange backwoods group, like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, or The Hills Have Eyes, and increases the paranoia and ferocity, while also including elements of claustrophobia.

But these creature attacks, while shocking, are not the biggest element of horror in the film. The Descent crafts a story of deep betrayal between close friends. There is a subtle hint at the beginning of the film that teases the rift between Sarah and Juno. After successfully navigating a white water rapid, Juno is playfully pushed out of the raft by Sarah as they navigate towards the river bank. Paul helps Juno out of the water and an awkward glance is shared between them. On the drive, Sarah asks why Paul is distracted, but he feigns ignorance just before they crash. Juno’s affair with Paul was deep and long given other clues, like the pendant. Juno left town immediately after the crash, and Sarah is still a little chaffed that she did not stay to help her work through her grief. Of course, Juno was also having grief, having lost her lover. Juno’s running away from trauma and poor personal choices foreshadows her similar moment when she gravely injures Beth. Instead of staying to be with her friend as she dies, Juno slinks back into the darkness of the cave leaving her for the predatory Crawlers to finish instead.

Meanwhile, Sarah is still not over the death of her family, especially the loss of her daughter who was about to celebrate a birthday. She is pulled into an ill-fated expedition by Juno who wants to help Sarah get back to her old self. Sarah feels unheard when she expresses concern on any number of occasions and feels even further betrayed when she finds out Juno lied to them about the location of the hike. She must succeed on her own against a group of Crawlers, battling her own inner demons as she fells monsters in the cave. Her renewal and return is signified by her literal baptism in the pit of blood as she emerges stronger and ready for battle. Upon finding out that Juno also left Beth to die, and was having an affair with her husband, strengthens her resolve for revenge, which she doesn’t take right away. She gains Juno’s trust as they find a way to escape and then attacks, leaving her wounded friend to a despicable fate. The ending described above is the original international ending, where Sarah’s escape was just a hallucination. The American version does give a more hopeful tone, which ends after the escape and Sarah seeing a vision of Juno. That version might be a little more horrific due to the fact that even though Sarah survived she would still be living with the guilt of killing her friend.

The film’s title also expresses the duality apparent in the film. The Descent is both the literal descent into the cave as well as the decline of Juno and Sarah’s friendship, and their descent into madness. The film does not shy away from several overt cinematic choices to indicate these themes. As the cavers begin their journey, they use red phosphorus flares to light the cavern, giving the scene an eerie and hellish glow. They appear to actually be descending into hell. Later, Rebecca and Sam use glow rods to see, which give off a greenish hue, creating an alien-like setting for the monstrous crawlers to attack. The coloration of the film moves from brighter to darker along the spectrum to channel the changes to the characters. One of the final images is Sarah climbing a mountain of bone to escape. The striking imagery is her walking on a sliver of white light to the entrance surrounded by utter blackness. Almost a heavenly ascent.

Overall The Descent is an evocative and effective film that will provide the right amount of action and suspense to horror enthusiasts, but also creates a tone that lingers far beyond the closing frame. The best horror films provide the jumps in the theater, but also leave audiences with the gift that keeps on giving. They leave indelible impressions that remain with the viewer which provide the odd shudder or goosebumps when thinking about the film. The Descent does all this and more and deserves a viewing this holiday season.

Assorted Musings

• The design of the Crawlers is similar to Count Orlok the vampyre from Nosferatu, a film that was reviewed last week for its 100th Anniversary.
• The Chatooga National Park is not a real location, but a reference to the Chatooga River, a real river, where the movie Deliverance was filmed. Both films have a similar theme of outsiders being attacked in an idyllic natural setting.
• Juno fans fear not. She somehow survived her fate and returned in the 2009 sequel The Descent: Part 2.