The Descent directed by Neil Marshall (UK, 2005)
Neil Marshall’s debut feature film – Dog Soldiers (2002) – was set in the Scottish Highlands and followed the (mis)fortunes of six trainee British soldiers battling in vain against rabid werewolves. These men ended up barracaded in a woodland cottage alongside a lone female – Megan, a zoologist. In true Night of the Living Dead style they are picked off one by one .
Perhaps conscious of the strident macho vibe of this film, Marshall’s follow up – The Descent – flips the gender to follow the (mis)fortunes of six women who are into extreme sports. The opening scene shows these lasses braving rapids in a dinghy.
The lone man in this story doesn’t last long. One could say he drew the short straw or, more accurately the long metals poles, since these are the sharp objects he is impaled upon in a freak car accident while driving his wife, Sara (Shauna Macdonald) home. The couple’s young daughter dies in the same accident. Moments before the crash, Sara says to him “You seem distant” and it transpires that this fatal distraction was all due to a clandestine fling he was having with another of the female adventurers, Juno (Natalie Mendoza).
One year on, Juno has organized a group reunion with a planned caving trip in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina (although the film was shot in Hertfordshire, England and Scotland). The claustrophobia of this ill-fated underground adventure proves the perfect setting for a horror film. When you’re down a hole the escape options are severely limited. In haunted houses there is at least the possibility of making a run for it although, as we well know, this rarely ends well.
In the first half of the film, we follow the ‘chicks with picks’ who, almost inevitably, find themselves trapped in a tunnel system without a map to guide them. Juno breaks the news to the other five that this particular cave is previously unexplored. Thanks for the warning!
Things go from bad to worse when the women realise they are not alone. The other cave-dwellers are pale-skinned creatures in human form that are billed as ‘crawlers’ on the credits. Appearance-wise they are a mix between Gollum and alien life forms. Behaviour-wise they are rabid monsters who feed on human flesh.
How these scary monsters got to be there in the first place is not explained but there’s a hint that they may be the offspring of cavemen (and women?). Existing in the pitch-dark means they are completely blind and navigate the caves by echolocation. They make creepy clicking sounds to announce their presence. With shades of A Quiet Place, the women can only be ‘seen’ by the crawlers if they make a sound but when you’re threatened with being eaten alive, maintaining a diplomatic silence is nigh on impossible.
Needless to say the second part of the film gets extremely messy. The women find that pick-axes have other uses other than breaking rocks. To add to the complications Sara finds out about Juno’s fling with her late hubby. This could conceivably be the moment to let bygones be bygones but Sara is not a forgiving soul.
All this descent into a living (and dying) hell is orchestrated with real panache by Neil Marshall. The protagonists are all women but there are no token feminist subtexts unless you want to see the crawlers as toxic males gone rogue. Above all, Marshall knows that horror works best with some back story so that you get to know the victims before they snuff it. The film is violent and gory but it’s intelligent too.
Personally, I was scared even before the crawlers make their entrance. Given that I get into a cold sweat over the thought of escape rooms, wild horses could not drag me into a pot-holing excursion. The Descent suggests that ‘avoid pitch-black caves’ should be added to the beginner’s school of horror advice that includes ‘don’t open the cellar door’ and ‘don’t explore dark woods’.
