The Descent

Review

The Descent (2005) is r/horror’s scariest movie and so I went into this movie with very high hopes and I think this movie rose to it. This movie utilizes a claustrophobic environment and a deteriorating main character to leave the viewer feeling unsettled throughout the runtime of this movie.

The Descent is about a group of women who go down into a cave as a fun excursion after one of the ladies’, Sarah’s, husband and daughter died in a tragic accident. When they get down into the cave there is a cave-in leaving them trapped and they realize they were lied to by the excursion leader, Juno and they are in an undocumented cave with no one aware to come and save them. They continue deeper into the cave searching for a way out but eventually discover that they are not the only ones in this cave and that there are wendigo-like monsters down there with them. One by one they all die either by the wendigoes or because of Juno and the movie ends with Sarah stabbing Juno in the leg and leaving her to be eaten by the monsters. The movie ends with Sarah leaving the cave and escaping, only for the last shot to be her waking up, implying that that whole sequence was a dream and she’s still trapped down in the cave.

This movie can be split pretty easily into two parts, before the monsters and after the monsters, which both have distinct ideas of horror and how they want the audience to feel. The first part of the movie puts more of an emphasis on the claustrophobic environment and the horror of being stranded in a dangerous space. The most intense moment in this part was when Sarah got stuck in a cramped tunnel, right before the cave-in. This moment goes on for quite a long time an she emphasizes over and over how she can’t move and she’s hyperventilating and panicking making the audience feel trapped in there with her. The camera work during this is excellent as it begins to slowly tilt closer to the end of the scene making the audience even more disoriented and affected.

The second portion of the movie is more typical in my opinion. It’s survival horror in a claustrophobic environment but I can’t deny that it’s done well. The first known sighting of the monsters is done really well as it looks so inhuman off in the distance and I love that the monsters can be found throughout the movie prior to our characters discovering them. I think the monster design is solidly scary, despite being not super interesting, they look pretty similar to the wendigo design in the second episode of Supernatural. However the makeup on the monsters looks pretty good and they only looked goofy when they were clearly cgi’d into the scene. The scariest moment here was probably when they truly become aware of the monster as we look through the camera to see all the girls and suddenly there’s an unknown figure behind one of them that you can barely get a look at before it immediately runs away.

The weakest aspect of this movie is easily the larger story behind the whole movie. For me, it feels like the writer came up with the idea of being trapped in a cave with monsters and then the story of the movie was the first thing they came up with for story context. The main focus of the movie is on the environment and the monsters and yet they bring up the context enough so that you can’t forget about it. The movie isn’t contained within itself since they reference things that happened beyond the bounds of the runtime over and over but the rest of the movie makes it pretty clear that it’s not truly interested in exploring something like Sarah’s grief or the way that Juno’s affair with Sarah’s husband could impact their relationship considering his untimely passing. I think this weird handling of the story is why I have it at a 7 because otherwise I would probably have it as a high 8.

The characters in this movie honestly weren’t that impressive but they weren’t as bad as they could have been. The only truly aggravating character was Holly but she ended up getting her just desserts as she broke her leg from doing something stupid and died as a result of her broken leg. I didn’t like Juno because of her role in the story but I think as a character she had a very clear mindset to follow as a viewer and I could see the type of person she was and the priorities she had, which shows impressive thought into her character. Our main character, Sarah, was very good in my opinion. I feel like I’ve heard a lot of people saying that she’s not likable due to her actions at the end and I don’t think that we need to morally agree with all of a characters actions in order to like them. The things she does in the end make a lot of sense considering where she is in the story and all that has happened to her so I really liked it.

Overall, this movie was pretty scary which is what it’s most known for. The story isn’t that strong or memorable but I think that’s excusable since the movie clearly wants you to pay more attention to everything happening in the cave rather than the lackluster character building utilizing context from beyond the cave. I would recommend this movie but I do think that it’s a little overhyped.