MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Descent’

In 2002, Neil Marshall directed a low-budget film called Dog Soldiers. The plot was simple; take a close-knit group of six men, strand them in the wilderness and expose them to hostile monsters, i.e. werewolves. The film received a healthy reception both critically and financially and gradually wound its way towards its final cult destination. It’s a great film–make sure to rent it though, as opposed to watching it on The Sci-Fi Channel. Cut to 2005, and you could be forgiven for thinking that Marshall’s third film, The Descent, in which a close group of six women are stranded in a cave and exposed to hostile under-dwellers, is an exact blueprint rip-off of his earlier film. Not so much Dog Soldiers as Lassie Spelunkers. You could be forgiven for thinking that then, but you’d also be wrong, because this film is an extremely different beast altogether. The Descent is much more streamlined. This film’s lean. It’s mean. And by god, it’s as scary as hell.


The plot of The Descent is fairly simple but extremely effective. Sarah, Juno and Beth are three old friends who used to engage in all manner of extreme sports, until Sarah’s husband and daughter died in a car accident that Sarah herself survived. A year later, Juno brings her two friends to the Appalachian mountains to join a merry little band of thrill-seeking femmes (wild base-jumper Holly and two Scandinavian half-sisters Rebecca and Sam) to do a bit of caving. However, once inside the cave all does not quite go according to plan, as an unexpected rock slide blocks the party’s exit route. At first, the group has to contend with navigating an extremely arduous route out of the cave. But matters get far, far worse when the six discover they are not alone–the cave is also home sweet home to a band of carnivorous beings who have happily skipped more than a few generations in the evolutionary chain, are not too picky about what they chow down on for dinner, and are rather nifty climbers.

Not just about action, The Descent is also a brilliant exercise in audience manipulation, building tension beautifully and then unleashing some fairly terrifying moments. Within its first couple of minutes, where we experience a truly horrific car accident, the film clearly states its intention to scare the bejeezers out of its audience, and continues to do so right until its delicious denouement. Along with some rather pleasing homages to classic movies, the film boasts fantastic action scenes, nail biting horror, impressive acting and a couple of darkly comic moments that ever-so-slightly ease the almost unbearable tension.

The Descent works (and plays) not only with movie imagery, but with the stuff of myth and dreams as well. It evokes hellish visions, from famous paintings (Goya’s Black Paintings, Fuseli’s “The Nightmare”) to Gothic gargoyles and Dore’s engravings for Dante’s “Inferno.” These almost subliminal references help drive The Descent, and give it a powerful mythic energy. It grasps when and how to draw upon these images to create just the right tone of hallucinatory fear, and set it reverberating in your head. The movie’s not pretentious or derivative, it’s just uncanny about knowing what to borrow and how to use it. One warning: Don’t let anybody tell you anything about the movie before you see it. The ride is a whole lot more fun if you don’t know where it’s headed.