The Descent

As I mentioned in my review of Wolf Creek, there are some films that you remember exactly who saw them with and where you were. The Descent is another of these as I went with my brother and one of my carers, Chris, who lasted just over thirteen minutes before deciding that the film was "too much" and spending the rest of the running time outside waiting for the film to finish!

I'd gone to see The Descent with high expectations after loving Neil Marshall's previous film, Dog Soldiers and when Chris, who isn't the greatest horror film fan in the world, decided he'd had enough after less than a quarter of an hour had passed, I knew that this was going to be good. The thing is, the film hadn't even reached the very scary, intense and violent bits yet so it was probably a good idea that he got out when he did.

As Dog Soldiers was a very 'blokey' movie, it was quite a surprise to find that this was virtually the flipside of that with the entire cast (apart from a surprisingly important small role by a man at the beginning) comprised of women. The film begins with five friends whitewater rafting and, when they reach the bottom, one of the women, Sarah, sets off home with her husband Paul and young daughter Jessica. Tragedy strikes when they go over a small hill and a van coming the other way crashes headfirst into them, sending one of the metal poles it is carrying straight through Paul's head and Jessica is also killed.

A year later and they meet up again as Juno has organised a cave diving trip in the Appalachian Mountains as a way to get back together and try and heal old wounds. This is the first time that Juno has seen Sarah since her husband and daughter were killed despite other friends remaining close. The group is a fairly mixed bunch, from Sarah, a widow, to her best friend, Beth, an English teacher, and a pair of sisters, Rebecca and Sam. Becca is the older, more cautious of the two whereas Sam is a bit more outgoing and wild despite having nearly finished her medical degree. Juno, the only American of the original five brings along and Irish friend of hers, Holly, a woman who even the carefree Juno considers a little too reckless for her own good.


After a night in a log cabin where they chat about men, wine and the future, they had off to the cave entrance but Juno is acting fairly strange and give rather ambiguous answers about the cave formation, with Holly already having dismissed it as ' a tourist trap'. Despite their misgivings, the other five decide to go along with Juno's plan and rappel down a completely isolated hole and into a cave system that quickly becomes pitch black, with absolutely no sign of daylight anywhere.

The tensions that existed between Sarah, Beth and Juno escalates when she admits having purposely left the map behind as there weren't going that cave system anyway, but to another one that has yet to be explored. Juno explains this away saying that she wants it to be a present for Sarah, to be the first group to successfully navigate this unknown area of the world and name it after Sarah. Everyone seems to react differently to this news, with Holly over the moon at having a real challenge, Juno extremely excited about the challenge and the other four experiencing a mix of excitement and apprehension. It didn't help that, on the trek to the cave entrance, they came across a huge elk carcass which has had its throat ripped out.


Once underground, most of them put their apprehension behind them and decide to get on with things, Holly trying out her new camcorder which has a night vision function, and Sarah keeping herself to herself and finding a small tunnel through to the next cave. Although the tunnel gets narrower as it goes on, five of the team managed to get through, but Sarah goes last and gets a little stuck, triggering a panic attack due to the sheer claustrophobia of the situation. Beth manages to talk her round, even going back so they can talk face-to-face and, just as they come out of the tunnel, it begins to collapse meaning that they will have to find another way out and won't be up to retrace their steps in order to return to their vehicles.

The further on they go, the more intricate and vast the cave system appears to be and, with Juno insisting that the only way out is to keep going rather than look for a way back, tensions begin to escalate. Sarah is also confronting her own Demons, constantly hearing a young girl's laughter and having flashbacks to Jessica's birthday. When they find an ancient mural, apparently drawn by Native Americans, which does indicate a second entrance, they know they do have to keep going in the hope of finding it to get home safely. However, things start to go very badly, very quickly as Holly, thinking she sees daylight, runs off and falls down a huge pit and suffers a compound fracture of her lower leg. Sarah, having wandered off following some laughter, finds an rusty miner's helmet from over a century ago which, together with the old piton that Becca found indicates that they weren't the first humans to try and navigate the system. Furthermore, unless Sarah's eyes are playing tricks on her, they aren't alone and are surrounded by a multitude of strange, bald, sightless creatures with ferocious teeth, sharp claws and the ability to 'see' in the dark, like bats and climb around the walls like lizards. With the group pulling itself apart, accidents taking their toll and the creatures on the hunt for fresh meat, survival is not going to be easy.


I thought The Descent was one of the finest films of 2005 and probably the greatest horror movie I'd seen in many years. It still ranks way up there as one of the very best genre films of the last 20 years. Everything Neil Marshall did well with Dog Soldiers, he does much better here and everything that didn't work so well or was merely mediocre in that werewolf movie is either completely omitted or adapted so it works even better. One of the great aspects of dog soldiers was the camaraderie among some of the troops and antipathy between some of the men. Marshall is clearly a man who knows how to write about how group dynamics work and making tensions between friends very much come to the boil in a pressure situation. When you watch The Descent, there are subtle hints at the beginning as to what may become a problem later on and, when you have a problem deep underground in a strange cave system, which no one has previously navigated and is full of flesh eating creatures, the last thing you need is to have someone with you that you don't trust.

The Descent is a real top notch horror movie with terrific characterisation, great acting by the entire cast, a really well written screenplay and incredible claustrophobia so it doesn't even need the 'crawlers' to have you squirming in your seat, Marshall achieves this just by having someone crawling through a narrow tunnel with virtually no light sources. Although a horror films don't need gore to succeed (and plenty of great horror movies absolutely no gore), used correctly, it adds to a film and Neil Marshall really knows how to use gore correctly and with homages to great horror movies like The Shining, Alien and Deliverance, he knows his fan base and plays to them perfectly. I wouldn't be at all surprised if, in years to come, The Descent is rated as highly as those films that Marshall references here.

The Disc

Extra Features
The commentary with Neil Marshall and cast members Shauna MacDonald, MyAnna Buring, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder and Nora-Jane Noone is a lively and enjoyable affair in which they chat about the difficulties in obtaining insurance, filming on location and on the soundstage with completely manufactured caves. They all talk very well and Marshall keeps them on the right track so they don't go completely off topic and end up chatting between themselves. It is quite funny to hear the level of macabre humour involved as one of them kept the mould of her head to put in the fridge and frighten her mother!

This works very well alongside the Crew Commentary in which Marshall is joined by producer Christian Colson, production designer Simon Bowles, editor Jon Harris and assistant editor Catriona Richardson and they concentrate much more on the technical aspects of making a film that is predominantly dark and although this one is less 'fun' than the cast commentary, it is nevertheless an extremely rewarding listen.


The second disc contains even more material, led by The Making of The Descent, an extremely in-depth and comprehensive look at the shooting process with contributions from most of the cast and crew members. At 41 minutes it isn't too long to get boring or short enough to merely gloss over the surface so strikes a balance very well between the two.

There is also a selection of deleted and extended scenes, none of which cry out for readmission and some outtakes which are, for a pleasant change, actually worth watching. Additionally, there is all the stuff that you tend to flick through once (if at all): cast and crew biographies, a stills gallery, storyboards, two trailers and a teaser trailer.

My only gripe is with the menu layout on disc one that doesn't allow you to navigate around as a torch highlights the options in turn so you press the 'enter' button when the one you want is illuminated -- if you miss it, you have to wait until it's cycles back around.

Although there isn't anything massive here that runs for hours on end, there is so much information contained in the two commentaries and the making of that you will know everything there is know about The Descent and more besides!

The Picture
For a film like this, where well over half takes place in a pitch black environment which is illuminated only by flares, torches and 'glow sticks', the transfer needs to be pretty much bang on in order to properly transmit the sheer level of claustrophobia from the cinema to the living room and this one delivers on every level. The Descent is a film that scares you simply through the oppressive atmosphere and, with the curtains closed and every light source in the room turned off or covered up, you really can get the most out of the film as your eyes strain for the slightest.

When it comes to the SFX make-up, blood and other practical effects, the work here is extremely impressive. The work done to create the Crawlers, especially on Craig Conway, who plays the lead crawler, Scar, is incredibly painstaking and it took hours to apply so Conway must be incredibly patient guy to go through all those hours in the make-up chair only to appear on set in an extremely revealing outfit! When people are injured, they really look it and that compound fracture is so realistic it has you on edge just looking at it, never mind when Sam puts her medical training to use and resets it!


The Sound
A large part of the film is all about the visuals and the fear comes from partial glances of something you may have seen, but this is complemented by the sound design, especially the 'echolocation' clicking sound that the crawlers emit in order to get their bearings in the pitch black and locate people, rocks and tunnels. It is an extremely evocative sound and one that will cause the less hardened viewer to go into a state of readiness to prepare them for a jump in the same way as the croaky noise that the ghost makes in the Ju-on films! For something so reliant on sound design and score, you really need an impressive surround soundtrack to properly immerse you in the experience.

Fortunately, the disc has two: a Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 track to compete for your attention. I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the two and as they are both extremely well encoded and do the job perfectly. As usual, the DTS option is louder than the Dolby Digital version and is recorded at a slightly higher bitrate so will probably be only soundtrack of choice, but I would defy anyone to tell the difference between if blindfolded in a display room.


Final Thoughts
The horror genre has its fair share of terrible movies as it is probably the only genre in which you can make a film for very little money and have it distributed to an audience that can be far from discriminating. As there is so much dross floating around, it makes it all the more worthwhile when something not only good comes along, but something genuinely brilliant. It is films like The Descent that make you glad to be a horror film fan as you know all of the little citations that the director has put in and I was extremely pleased when this was recognised as being the great film it is by Sight & Sound which had it in their top five films of 2005 so it was not only genre fans who liked it, but critics from all around the world.

It is a terrific film that comes with a splendid AV package and an extremely good selection of extra features, with hours of supplementary material. If you don't already own this, order it or go out and buy it now.