The Descent
Encyclopedia
The Descent is a 2005 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall
. The film follows six women who, having entered an unmapped cave system, become trapped, and are hunted by subterranean flesh-eating humanoid
s.
Filming took place in the United Kingdom; exterior scenes were filmed at Ashridge Park, in Buckinghamshire, and interior scenes were filmed in sets built at Pinewood Studios
near London. Filmmakers considered it too dangerous and time-consuming to shoot in an actual cave, and the cave featured in the film was built at the studio. The Descent opened commercially 8 July 2005 in the United Kingdom. It premiered in the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opened commercially on 4 August 2006 in the United States.
), Sarah (Shauna Macdonald
) and Beth (Alex Reid) are whitewater rafting in Scotland. Sarah's husband Paul (Oliver Milburn
) and their daughter Jessica (Molly Kayll) wave and cheer from the bank. On the drive back to their hotel Paul is distracted, causing a head-on collision. The car into which he collides is carrying copper poles on the hood. The poles impale Paul and Jessica through the head, killing them instantly. Sarah survives and is extremely distraught over their deaths.
One year later, Juno, Sarah, Beth, Sam (MyAnna Buring
) and Rebecca (Saskia Mulder
) are reunited at a rustic cabin in the Appalachian Mountains
of North Carolina
, USA. Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), Juno's new thrill-seeking friend, is introduced. As they reminisce over an old photo of Juno, Sarah, and Beth, Sarah says "Love each day", explaining that it was a saying of her late husband's; they then toast to their upcoming adventure. Though the group believes they are getting together for old times sake, Juno and Beth have planned this adventure to help Sarah recover from the psychological trauma of losing her family, as she still suffers from nightmares and hallucinations of the accident and of her daughter, despite her heavy medications.
The next morning the group drives off into the wilderness and goes caving
, supposedly in Borhem Caverns, which Holly disparages as a 'tourist trap'. When the group breaks for lunch in a huge gallery, Juno tearfully apologizes to Sarah for not being around for her after the accident, but Sarah is distant. As the group moves through the next passage, Sarah gets stuck and panics. Beth manages to calm her down but the tunnel collapses behind them, and Sarah barely makes it through. After a heated discussion, Juno admits that she has led them into an unknown cave system, instead of the fully explored Borhem cave system as they had originally planned. The only people who were told about their expedition think they are at Borhem, making rescue impossible. Privately, Juno tells Sarah that she led them into the unknown cave hoping to restore their relationship, but Sarah rebuffs her, thinking like the rest of the group that the whole trip was to flaunt Juno's reputation as an outdoors expert and explorer. The existence of a second exit is suggested by a cave painting
, and climbing equipment from previous visitors, giving the group some hope for escape.
Holly falls down a hole and breaks her leg. Sam sets Holly's fracture with a splint and they carry her along. As the others help Holly, Sarah wanders off and observes a pale, humanoid creature drinking at a pool. It scampers off into the darkness when Sarah gasps, allowing it to become aware of her existence. The others think Sarah imagined it, but Sarah insists that she saw someone.
Soon after, the cave splits into multiple dark passages, littered with the skeletons of dead animals. The group is terrified. Rebecca cracks and begins vainly calling out into the darkness for help. The group is attacked by one of the creatures (which they call "crawlers"). The group scatters, and the crawler rips open Holly's throat. Sarah trips, falls into a pit and passes out. Seeing Holly is still alive, Juno tries to defend her from the crawlers, but in the confusion accidentally stabs Beth in the neck with her pickaxe. Beth grabs Juno's pendant
as she drops to the ground, but Juno stumbles away in shock as Beth reaches out to her.
Juno eventually locates Sam and Rebecca and rescues them from a crawler. She asks Sam what the crawlers are and Sam tells her that they are humanoid people who have evolved to live perfectly in the cave, and that they are blind, using sound to hunt. After this Juno tells them she may have found a way out, but will not leave without Sarah. The others reluctantly agree to help her search.
Elsewhere, Sarah awakens and encounters the mortally wounded Beth, who tells Sarah that Juno wounded her and left her. Sarah does not believe her until Beth gives her Juno's pendant, the one inscribed with "Love each day". Beth reveals that Sarah's husband was having an affair with Juno. Beth, in extreme pain, asks Sarah to euthanize her, and Sarah reluctantly complies. Sarah soon encounters and kills a young crawler, a female crawler, and a male crawler in quick succession while Juno, Sam and Rebecca are pursued by a large group of crawlers. Sam runs ahead but stops at the ledge of a large chasm. She attempts to establish a pulley system across the chasm when Juno and Rebecca finally catch up and try to convince her to turn around; she does not have enough rope. A crawler attacks and mortally wounds her. With her last ounce of strength, she stabs the crawler with her knife which falls into the water below. Juno and Rebecca mourn over Sam's death when another crawler attacks Rebecca; tearing her stomach open and eating her intestines. Juno escapes over the ledge and into the water below only to encounter the crawler Sam had stabbed.
After killing the crawler, Juno climbs out of the chasm and is helped onto a ledge by Sarah, who asks her if she saw Beth die. Juno nods. The two cautiously explore the caves until they encounter four crawlers; Sarah and Juno both kill two each. Sarah then faces Juno, and releases Juno's pendant from inside her closed fist, revealing that she knows that Juno lied and that she wounded Beth. Sarah cripples Juno with a pickaxe; stabbing her in the leg. Juno pulls the pickaxe from her leg and turns to face a large group of crawlers while Sarah leaves her behind to die. She hears Juno's screams, which abruptly fall silent.
Sarah falls down a hole and is knocked unconscious. She awakens, scrambles up a huge pile of bones towards daylight, squeezes through a narrow opening onto the surface, runs hysterically and in shock through the forest to her vehicle and speeds off. She pulls over to vomit and when she sits up, she sees Juno sitting next to her; face streaked with blood.
Sarah awakes at the bottom of the same hole. Her escape was nothing but a hopeful dream. She looks upon a vision of her daughter as the screams of the crawlers echo in the cave around her.
's 2002 film Dog Soldiers was a moderate success, the director received numerous requests to direct other horror films. The director was initially wary of being typecast as a horror film director, though he eventually agreed to make The Descent, emphasizing, "They are very different films." Marshall decided to cast only women in the main roles, going against the original plan for a gender diverse cast.
The cast included Shauna Macdonald
as Sarah, Natalie Mendoza
as Juno, Alex Reid as Beth, Saskia Mulder
as Rebecca, MyAnna Buring
as Sam, Nora-Jane Noone as Holly, Oliver Milburn
as Paul, and Molly Kayll as Jessica. Craig Conway
portrayed one of the film's crawlers, Scar.
. Exterior scenes were filmed in Scotland, and interior scenes were filmed in sets built at Pinewood Studios
near London. The cave was built at Pinewood because filmmakers considered it too dangerous and time-consuming to shoot in an actual cave. Set pieces were reused with care, and filmmakers sought to limit lighting to the sources that the characters bring with them into the cave, such as the helmet lights.
Marshall cited the films The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
, The Thing, and Deliverance
as influences in establishing tension in The Descent. The director elaborated, "We really wanted to ramp up the tension slowly, unlike all the American horror films you see now. They take it up to 11 in the first few minutes and then simply can't keep it up. We wanted to show all these terrible things in the cave: dark, drowning, claustrophobia. Then, when it couldn't get any worse, make it worse."
Simon Bowles
designed the maze of caves for The Descent. Reviews credited Bowles: "cave sets by production designer Simon Bowles look just like the real thing" and "Bowles’ beautifully designed cave sets conjure a world of subterranean darkness."
Production of The Descent was in competition with an American film of a similar premise, The Cave
. The Descent was originally scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom by November 2005 or February 2006, but The Cave began filming six months before its competitor. Filmmakers of The Descent decided to release the film before The Cave, so they fast-tracked production to be completed by the end of February 2005.
In the 4 August 2006 issue of Entertainment Weekly
, it was stated that the ending was trimmed because American viewers did not like its "uber-hopeless finale". Lionsgate marketing chief Tim Palen
said, "It's a visceral ride, and by the time you get to the ending you're drained. [Director Neil] Marshall had a number of endings in mind when he shot the film, so he was open [to making a switch]." Marshall compared the change to the ending of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
, saying, "Just because she gets away, does that make it a happy ending?"
The North American Unrated DVD includes the original ending. Recently, the film has been airing on Canada's The Movie Network, which has the original ending. In contrast the American Syfy Channel
as recently as August 27, 2010 broadcast the recut version of Sarah escaping, with Juno's spectre appearing beside her in the SUV.
As exhibited on Syfy (Latin America), the Descent retains the original ending, with Sarah awakening back in the cave facing her dead daughter surrounded by the crawlers.
who have stayed underground. The director explained, "They've evolved in this environment over thousands of years. They've adapted perfectly to thrive in the cave. They've lost their eyesight, they have acute hearing and smell and function perfectly in the pitch black. They're expert climbers, so they can go up any rock face and that is their world." Filmmakers kept the crawler design hidden from the actresses until they were revealed in the scenes in which the characters encountered the creatures, to allow for natural tension.
first chose to have a dark cave as the setting for his horror film The Descent then decided to add the element of the crawlers, describing them as "something that could get the women, something human, but not quite". The crawlers were depicted as cavemen who never left the caves and evolved in the dark. The director included mothers and children in the colony of creatures, defining his vision, "It is a colony and I thought that was far more believable than making them the classic monsters. If they had been all male, it would have made no sense, so I wanted to create a more realistic context for them. I wanted to have this very feral, very primal species living underground, but I wanted to make them human. I didn't want to make them aliens because humans are the scariest things."
The crawlers were designed by Paul Hyett, a makeup and prosthetics creator. Production designer Simon Bowles
said that the crawler design had started out as "wide-eyed and more creature-like", but the design shifted toward a more human appearance. Crawlers originally had pure white skin, but the look was adjusted to seem grubbier. The skin was originally phosphorescent in appearance, but the effect was too bright and reflective in the darkened set, so the adjustment was made for them to blend in shadows. The director barred the film's all-female cast from seeing the actors in full crawler make-up until their first appearance on screen. Actress Natalie Mendoza
said of the effect, "When the moment came, I nearly wet my pants! I was running around afterwards, laughing in this hysterical way and trying to hide the fact that I was pretty freaked out. Even after that scene, we never really felt comfortable with them."
The crawlers reappear in The Descent Part 2, a sequel by Jon Harris
with the first film's director Neil Marshall as executive producer. For the sequel, Hyett improved the camouflaging ability of the crawlers' skin tones to deliver better scares. According to Hyett, "Jon wanted them more viciously feral, inbred, scarred and deformed, with rows of sharklike teeth for ripping flesh." A charnel house
was designed for the crawlers as well as a set that the crew called the "Crawler Crapper".
described the crawlers as "blind, snarling cave-dwellers, looking much like Gollum
's bigger kin". Douglas Tseng of The Straits Times
also noted that the crawlers looked similar to Gollum, being a cross between the creature and the vampiric Reapers from Blade II
. David Germain of the Associated Press
noted of the crawlers, "[They] have evolved to suit their environment—eyes blind because of the darkness in which they dwell, skin slimy and gray, ears batlike to channel their super-hearing." The crawlers are sexually dimorphic, with males being completely bald, whilst females sport thick dark hair on their heads. They are nocturnal hunters which surface from their caves to hunt for prey and bring the spoils of their hunts to their caverns.The crawlers are carnivores and kill everything in their sight although they had no sight.
's In Voluptas Mors photograph.
The film's marketing campaign in the United Kingdom was disrupted by the London bombings
in July 2005. Advertisements on London's public transport system
(including the bus that had exploded) had included posters that carried the quote, "Outright terror... bold and brilliant", and depicted a terrified woman screaming in a tunnel. The film's theatrical distributor in the UK, Pathé
, recalled the posters from their placement in the London Underground
and reworked the campaign to exclude the word "terror" from advertised reviews of The Descent. Pathé also distributed the new versions to TV and radio stations. The distributor's marketing chief, Anna Butler, said of the new approach, "We changed tack to concentrate on the women involved all standing together and fighting back. That seemed to chime with the prevailing mood of defiance that set in the weekend after the bombs."
Neil Marshall stated in a review "Shauna was pretty upset about it; it was on newspapers all across the county" and cites the attacks as harming the film's box office, as "people were still trapped underground in reality, so no one really wanted to go see a film about people trapped underground...".
Many commentators, including writers for Variety
and The Times
, remarked on the rather unfortunate coincidence.
Due to these events there was some initial concern that the film's release might have been delayed out of sensitivity for the tragedy but Pathé ultimately chose to release the film on schedule, with a slightly retooled advertising campaign; however, the US promotional campaign managed by Lionsgate Films was significantly different from the original European version.
on 6 July 2005. The film commercially opened on 329 screens in the UK and received limited releases in other European countries, eventually earning more than £6 million in box office receipts. The London bombings
in the same month was reported to have affected the box office performance of The Descent.
Based on 164 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes
, The Descent received an 84% "Certified Fresh" overall approval rating, with the sites consensus stating "Deft direction and strong performances from its all-female cast guide The Descent, a riveting, claustrophobic horror film. In this low-budget import from Scotland, director Neil Marshall has masterfully created a spelunking nightmare, which doubles as a compelling meditation on morality, vengeance, and the depths to which we might go for survival." By comparison, Metacritic
calculated an average score of 71 out of 100 from the 30 reviews it collected. On its debut weekend in the US, The Descent opened with a three-day gross of $8.8 million, and finished with $26,005,908. Total worldwide box office receipts are $57,051,053.
Roger Ebert
's editor, Jim Emerson, reviewed the film for Ebert's column whilst Ebert was on leave due to surgery, giving it four out of four stars. He wrote, "This is the fresh, exciting summer movie I've been wanting for months. Or for years, it seems."
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times
described The Descent as "one of the better horror entertainments of the last few years", calling it "indisputably and pleasurably nerve-jangling". Dargis applauded the claustrophobic atmosphere of the film, though she perceived sexual overtones in the all-female cast with their labored breathing and sweaty clothing. Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald
thought that the film devolved into a guessing game of who would survive, though he praised Marshall's "nightmare imagery" for generating scares that work better than other horror films. Rodriguez also noted the attempt to add dimension to the female characters but felt that the actresses were unable to perform.
Top-ten lists, 2006:
Bloody Disgusting
ranked the film third in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "One of the scariest films of this or any decade... Ultimately, The Descent is the purest kind of horror film – ruthless, unforgiving, showing no mercy."
Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer
thought a weakness of The Descent was the failure of the writer to explain the evolution of the creature, though he said, "Their clicking and howling, used for echolocation and communication, makes them more alien; this otherness gives humans permission to mutilate them without seeming too disgusting to be sympathetic." Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune
thought that the crawlers should have been left out of the film, believing, "Watching those gray, slithering beings chasing and biting the women makes it hard to maintain any suspension of disbelief."
in London during 2008 and was released on 2 December 2009 in the UK.
Neil Marshall
Neil Marshall is an English film director, editor and screenwriter. Marshall began his career in editing and in 2002 directed his first feature film Dog Soldiers, which became a cult film. He followed up with the critically acclaimed horror film The Descent in 2005...
. The film follows six women who, having entered an unmapped cave system, become trapped, and are hunted by subterranean flesh-eating humanoid
Humanoid
A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being. The term first appeared in 1912 to refer to fossils which were morphologically similar to, but not identical with, those of the human skeleton. Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, it...
s.
Filming took place in the United Kingdom; exterior scenes were filmed at Ashridge Park, in Buckinghamshire, and interior scenes were filmed in sets built at Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...
near London. Filmmakers considered it too dangerous and time-consuming to shoot in an actual cave, and the cave featured in the film was built at the studio. The Descent opened commercially 8 July 2005 in the United Kingdom. It premiered in the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opened commercially on 4 August 2006 in the United States.
Plot
Juno (Natalie MendozaNatalie Mendoza
Natalie Jackson Mendoza is a Hong Kong-born Australian-British-Filipina classical theatre-trained actress and musician. She is best known for her role as one of the main characters, Jackie Clunes in the British TV drama Hotel Babylon and as tough girl Juno in the acclaimed horror thriller The...
), Sarah (Shauna Macdonald
Shauna Macdonald
Shauna Macdonald is a Scottish television and film actress.-Biography:Shauna Macdonald was born in Malaysia and shortly after moved back to her family's native Edinburgh, Scotland, before moving to Glasgow to train at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.She and her husband, the actor Cal...
) and Beth (Alex Reid) are whitewater rafting in Scotland. Sarah's husband Paul (Oliver Milburn
Oliver Milburn
Oliver Milburn , occasionally known by the name Oz Milburn, is an English actor.-Early life:Milburn was born in Dorset and educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, and then Eton College. He then went straight into television, with no formal acting training.-Career:He played Matthew Bannerman in...
) and their daughter Jessica (Molly Kayll) wave and cheer from the bank. On the drive back to their hotel Paul is distracted, causing a head-on collision. The car into which he collides is carrying copper poles on the hood. The poles impale Paul and Jessica through the head, killing them instantly. Sarah survives and is extremely distraught over their deaths.
One year later, Juno, Sarah, Beth, Sam (MyAnna Buring
MyAnna Buring
MyAnna Buring is a Swedish actress best known for appearing in the 2005 horror film The Descent.- Early life :Buring was born in Sweden but grew up in the Middle East...
) and Rebecca (Saskia Mulder
Saskia Mulder
Saskia Mulder is a Dutch film and television actress. She is the younger sister of supermodel Karen Mulder.-Career:...
) are reunited at a rustic cabin in the Appalachian Mountains
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...
of North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, USA. Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), Juno's new thrill-seeking friend, is introduced. As they reminisce over an old photo of Juno, Sarah, and Beth, Sarah says "Love each day", explaining that it was a saying of her late husband's; they then toast to their upcoming adventure. Though the group believes they are getting together for old times sake, Juno and Beth have planned this adventure to help Sarah recover from the psychological trauma of losing her family, as she still suffers from nightmares and hallucinations of the accident and of her daughter, despite her heavy medications.
The next morning the group drives off into the wilderness and goes caving
Caving
Caving—also occasionally known as spelunking in the United States and potholing in the United Kingdom—is the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems...
, supposedly in Borhem Caverns, which Holly disparages as a 'tourist trap'. When the group breaks for lunch in a huge gallery, Juno tearfully apologizes to Sarah for not being around for her after the accident, but Sarah is distant. As the group moves through the next passage, Sarah gets stuck and panics. Beth manages to calm her down but the tunnel collapses behind them, and Sarah barely makes it through. After a heated discussion, Juno admits that she has led them into an unknown cave system, instead of the fully explored Borhem cave system as they had originally planned. The only people who were told about their expedition think they are at Borhem, making rescue impossible. Privately, Juno tells Sarah that she led them into the unknown cave hoping to restore their relationship, but Sarah rebuffs her, thinking like the rest of the group that the whole trip was to flaunt Juno's reputation as an outdoors expert and explorer. The existence of a second exit is suggested by a cave painting
Cave painting
Cave paintings are paintings on cave walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to prehistoric times. The earliest European cave paintings date to the Aurignacian, some 32,000 years ago. The purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known...
, and climbing equipment from previous visitors, giving the group some hope for escape.
Holly falls down a hole and breaks her leg. Sam sets Holly's fracture with a splint and they carry her along. As the others help Holly, Sarah wanders off and observes a pale, humanoid creature drinking at a pool. It scampers off into the darkness when Sarah gasps, allowing it to become aware of her existence. The others think Sarah imagined it, but Sarah insists that she saw someone.
Soon after, the cave splits into multiple dark passages, littered with the skeletons of dead animals. The group is terrified. Rebecca cracks and begins vainly calling out into the darkness for help. The group is attacked by one of the creatures (which they call "crawlers"). The group scatters, and the crawler rips open Holly's throat. Sarah trips, falls into a pit and passes out. Seeing Holly is still alive, Juno tries to defend her from the crawlers, but in the confusion accidentally stabs Beth in the neck with her pickaxe. Beth grabs Juno's pendant
Pendant
A pendant is a loose-hanging piece of jewellery, generally attached by a small loop to a necklace, when the ensemble may be known as a "pendant necklace". A pendant earring is an earring with a piece hanging down. In modern French "pendant" is the gerund form of “hanging”...
as she drops to the ground, but Juno stumbles away in shock as Beth reaches out to her.
Juno eventually locates Sam and Rebecca and rescues them from a crawler. She asks Sam what the crawlers are and Sam tells her that they are humanoid people who have evolved to live perfectly in the cave, and that they are blind, using sound to hunt. After this Juno tells them she may have found a way out, but will not leave without Sarah. The others reluctantly agree to help her search.
Elsewhere, Sarah awakens and encounters the mortally wounded Beth, who tells Sarah that Juno wounded her and left her. Sarah does not believe her until Beth gives her Juno's pendant, the one inscribed with "Love each day". Beth reveals that Sarah's husband was having an affair with Juno. Beth, in extreme pain, asks Sarah to euthanize her, and Sarah reluctantly complies. Sarah soon encounters and kills a young crawler, a female crawler, and a male crawler in quick succession while Juno, Sam and Rebecca are pursued by a large group of crawlers. Sam runs ahead but stops at the ledge of a large chasm. She attempts to establish a pulley system across the chasm when Juno and Rebecca finally catch up and try to convince her to turn around; she does not have enough rope. A crawler attacks and mortally wounds her. With her last ounce of strength, she stabs the crawler with her knife which falls into the water below. Juno and Rebecca mourn over Sam's death when another crawler attacks Rebecca; tearing her stomach open and eating her intestines. Juno escapes over the ledge and into the water below only to encounter the crawler Sam had stabbed.
After killing the crawler, Juno climbs out of the chasm and is helped onto a ledge by Sarah, who asks her if she saw Beth die. Juno nods. The two cautiously explore the caves until they encounter four crawlers; Sarah and Juno both kill two each. Sarah then faces Juno, and releases Juno's pendant from inside her closed fist, revealing that she knows that Juno lied and that she wounded Beth. Sarah cripples Juno with a pickaxe; stabbing her in the leg. Juno pulls the pickaxe from her leg and turns to face a large group of crawlers while Sarah leaves her behind to die. She hears Juno's screams, which abruptly fall silent.
Sarah falls down a hole and is knocked unconscious. She awakens, scrambles up a huge pile of bones towards daylight, squeezes through a narrow opening onto the surface, runs hysterically and in shock through the forest to her vehicle and speeds off. She pulls over to vomit and when she sits up, she sees Juno sitting next to her; face streaked with blood.
Sarah awakes at the bottom of the same hole. Her escape was nothing but a hopeful dream. She looks upon a vision of her daughter as the screams of the crawlers echo in the cave around her.
Production
When Neil MarshallNeil Marshall
Neil Marshall is an English film director, editor and screenwriter. Marshall began his career in editing and in 2002 directed his first feature film Dog Soldiers, which became a cult film. He followed up with the critically acclaimed horror film The Descent in 2005...
's 2002 film Dog Soldiers was a moderate success, the director received numerous requests to direct other horror films. The director was initially wary of being typecast as a horror film director, though he eventually agreed to make The Descent, emphasizing, "They are very different films." Marshall decided to cast only women in the main roles, going against the original plan for a gender diverse cast.
Casting
Filmmakers originally planned for the cast to be both male and female, but Neil Marshall's business partner realized that horror films almost never have all-female casts. Defying convention, Marshall cast all women into the role, and to avoid making them clichéd, he solicited basic advice from his female friends. He explained the difference, "The women discuss how they feel about the situation, which the soldiers in Dog Soldiers would never have done." He also gave the characters different accents to enable the audience to tell the difference between the women and to establish a more "cosmopolitan feel" than the British marketing of Dog Soldiers.The cast included Shauna Macdonald
Shauna Macdonald
Shauna Macdonald is a Scottish television and film actress.-Biography:Shauna Macdonald was born in Malaysia and shortly after moved back to her family's native Edinburgh, Scotland, before moving to Glasgow to train at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.She and her husband, the actor Cal...
as Sarah, Natalie Mendoza
Natalie Mendoza
Natalie Jackson Mendoza is a Hong Kong-born Australian-British-Filipina classical theatre-trained actress and musician. She is best known for her role as one of the main characters, Jackie Clunes in the British TV drama Hotel Babylon and as tough girl Juno in the acclaimed horror thriller The...
as Juno, Alex Reid as Beth, Saskia Mulder
Saskia Mulder
Saskia Mulder is a Dutch film and television actress. She is the younger sister of supermodel Karen Mulder.-Career:...
as Rebecca, MyAnna Buring
MyAnna Buring
MyAnna Buring is a Swedish actress best known for appearing in the 2005 horror film The Descent.- Early life :Buring was born in Sweden but grew up in the Middle East...
as Sam, Nora-Jane Noone as Holly, Oliver Milburn
Oliver Milburn
Oliver Milburn , occasionally known by the name Oz Milburn, is an English actor.-Early life:Milburn was born in Dorset and educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, and then Eton College. He then went straight into television, with no formal acting training.-Career:He played Matthew Bannerman in...
as Paul, and Molly Kayll as Jessica. Craig Conway
Craig Conway (actor)
Craig Conway is a British actor. Conway has appeared in a number of stage plays and British television series in addition to his film work.Conway is the husband of actress Jill Halfpenny, with whom he has a son.-Filmography:...
portrayed one of the film's crawlers, Scar.
Filming
While The Descent was set in North America, the film was shot entirely in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. Exterior scenes were filmed in Scotland, and interior scenes were filmed in sets built at Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...
near London. The cave was built at Pinewood because filmmakers considered it too dangerous and time-consuming to shoot in an actual cave. Set pieces were reused with care, and filmmakers sought to limit lighting to the sources that the characters bring with them into the cave, such as the helmet lights.
Marshall cited the films The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a 1974 American independent horror film directed and produced by Tobe Hooper, who cowrote it with Kim Henkel. It stars Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, and Gunnar Hansen, who respectively portray Sally Hardesty, Franklin Hardesty, the...
, The Thing, and Deliverance
Deliverance
Deliverance is a 1972 American thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman. Principal cast members include Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty in his film debut. The film is based on a 1970 novel of the same name by American author James Dickey, who has a small role in the...
as influences in establishing tension in The Descent. The director elaborated, "We really wanted to ramp up the tension slowly, unlike all the American horror films you see now. They take it up to 11 in the first few minutes and then simply can't keep it up. We wanted to show all these terrible things in the cave: dark, drowning, claustrophobia. Then, when it couldn't get any worse, make it worse."
Simon Bowles
Simon Bowles
Simon Bowles is a British production designer, who got his start in the film industry in 1993, working as an art department runner and then standby art director...
designed the maze of caves for The Descent. Reviews credited Bowles: "cave sets by production designer Simon Bowles look just like the real thing" and "Bowles’ beautifully designed cave sets conjure a world of subterranean darkness."
Production of The Descent was in competition with an American film of a similar premise, The Cave
The Cave (film)
The Cave is a 2005 horror film, directed by Bruce Hunt. It stars Cole Hauser, Eddie Cibrian, Morris Chestnut, Marcel Iureş, Lena Headey, Rick Ravanello, Piper Perabo and Daniel Dae Kim.-Plot:...
. The Descent was originally scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom by November 2005 or February 2006, but The Cave began filming six months before its competitor. Filmmakers of The Descent decided to release the film before The Cave, so they fast-tracked production to be completed by the end of February 2005.
Editing
The Descent was released in North America with approximately a minute cut from the end. In the American cut, Sarah escapes from the cave and sees Juno, but the film does not cut back to the cave.In the 4 August 2006 issue of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
, it was stated that the ending was trimmed because American viewers did not like its "uber-hopeless finale". Lionsgate marketing chief Tim Palen
Tim Palen
Tim Palen is a American motion picture marketing executive and award-winning photographer. He is Lionsgate's president of theatrical marketing and oversees all Lionsgate marketing initiatives...
said, "It's a visceral ride, and by the time you get to the ending you're drained. [Director Neil] Marshall had a number of endings in mind when he shot the film, so he was open [to making a switch]." Marshall compared the change to the ending of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a 1974 American independent horror film directed and produced by Tobe Hooper, who cowrote it with Kim Henkel. It stars Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, and Gunnar Hansen, who respectively portray Sally Hardesty, Franklin Hardesty, the...
, saying, "Just because she gets away, does that make it a happy ending?"
The North American Unrated DVD includes the original ending. Recently, the film has been airing on Canada's The Movie Network, which has the original ending. In contrast the American Syfy Channel
Syfy
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
as recently as August 27, 2010 broadcast the recut version of Sarah escaping, with Juno's spectre appearing beside her in the SUV.
As exhibited on Syfy (Latin America), the Descent retains the original ending, with Sarah awakening back in the cave facing her dead daughter surrounded by the crawlers.
Creature design
In the film, the women encounter underground creatures referred to as crawlers by the production crew. Marshall described the crawlers as cavemenCaveman
A caveman or troglodyte is a stock character based upon widespread concepts of the way in which early prehistoric humans may have looked and behaved...
who have stayed underground. The director explained, "They've evolved in this environment over thousands of years. They've adapted perfectly to thrive in the cave. They've lost their eyesight, they have acute hearing and smell and function perfectly in the pitch black. They're expert climbers, so they can go up any rock face and that is their world." Filmmakers kept the crawler design hidden from the actresses until they were revealed in the scenes in which the characters encountered the creatures, to allow for natural tension.
Conception
Director Neil MarshallNeil Marshall
Neil Marshall is an English film director, editor and screenwriter. Marshall began his career in editing and in 2002 directed his first feature film Dog Soldiers, which became a cult film. He followed up with the critically acclaimed horror film The Descent in 2005...
first chose to have a dark cave as the setting for his horror film The Descent then decided to add the element of the crawlers, describing them as "something that could get the women, something human, but not quite". The crawlers were depicted as cavemen who never left the caves and evolved in the dark. The director included mothers and children in the colony of creatures, defining his vision, "It is a colony and I thought that was far more believable than making them the classic monsters. If they had been all male, it would have made no sense, so I wanted to create a more realistic context for them. I wanted to have this very feral, very primal species living underground, but I wanted to make them human. I didn't want to make them aliens because humans are the scariest things."
The crawlers were designed by Paul Hyett, a makeup and prosthetics creator. Production designer Simon Bowles
Simon Bowles
Simon Bowles is a British production designer, who got his start in the film industry in 1993, working as an art department runner and then standby art director...
said that the crawler design had started out as "wide-eyed and more creature-like", but the design shifted toward a more human appearance. Crawlers originally had pure white skin, but the look was adjusted to seem grubbier. The skin was originally phosphorescent in appearance, but the effect was too bright and reflective in the darkened set, so the adjustment was made for them to blend in shadows. The director barred the film's all-female cast from seeing the actors in full crawler make-up until their first appearance on screen. Actress Natalie Mendoza
Natalie Mendoza
Natalie Jackson Mendoza is a Hong Kong-born Australian-British-Filipina classical theatre-trained actress and musician. She is best known for her role as one of the main characters, Jackie Clunes in the British TV drama Hotel Babylon and as tough girl Juno in the acclaimed horror thriller The...
said of the effect, "When the moment came, I nearly wet my pants! I was running around afterwards, laughing in this hysterical way and trying to hide the fact that I was pretty freaked out. Even after that scene, we never really felt comfortable with them."
The crawlers reappear in The Descent Part 2, a sequel by Jon Harris
Jon Harris
Jonathan Cecil Harris is a former American football defensive end in the National Football League for the Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Browns, and the Green Bay Packers. He played college football at the University of Virginia and was drafted in the first round of the 1997 NFL Draft...
with the first film's director Neil Marshall as executive producer. For the sequel, Hyett improved the camouflaging ability of the crawlers' skin tones to deliver better scares. According to Hyett, "Jon wanted them more viciously feral, inbred, scarred and deformed, with rows of sharklike teeth for ripping flesh." A charnel house
Charnel house
A charnel house is a vault or building where human skeletal remains are stored. They are often built near churches for depositing bones that are unearthed while digging graves...
was designed for the crawlers as well as a set that the crew called the "Crawler Crapper".
Description
Rene Rodriguez of The Miami HeraldThe Miami Herald
The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...
described the crawlers as "blind, snarling cave-dwellers, looking much like Gollum
Gollum
Gollum is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He was introduced in the author's fantasy novel The Hobbit, and became an important supporting character in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings....
's bigger kin". Douglas Tseng of The Straits Times
The Straits Times
The Straits Times is an English language daily broadsheet newspaper based in Singapore currently owned by Singapore Press Holdings . It is the country's highest-selling paper, with a current daily circulation of nearly 400,000...
also noted that the crawlers looked similar to Gollum, being a cross between the creature and the vampiric Reapers from Blade II
Blade II
Blade II is a 2002 superhero vampire film based on the fictional Marvel Comics character Blade. It is the sequel of the Blade film series. It was written by David S. Goyer, who also wrote the previous film...
. David Germain of the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
noted of the crawlers, "[They] have evolved to suit their environment—eyes blind because of the darkness in which they dwell, skin slimy and gray, ears batlike to channel their super-hearing." The crawlers are sexually dimorphic, with males being completely bald, whilst females sport thick dark hair on their heads. They are nocturnal hunters which surface from their caves to hunt for prey and bring the spoils of their hunts to their caverns.The crawlers are carnivores and kill everything in their sight although they had no sight.
Marketing
The skull of women motif used in some advertising material is based on Philippe HalsmanPhilippe Halsman
Philippe Halsman was an American portrait photographer.-Life and work:Born to a Jewish family of Morduch Halsman, a dentist, and Ita Grintuch, a grammar school principal, in Riga, Halsman studied electrical engineering in Dresden....
's In Voluptas Mors photograph.
The film's marketing campaign in the United Kingdom was disrupted by the London bombings
7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United Kingdom, targeting civilians using London's public transport system during the morning rush hour....
in July 2005. Advertisements on London's public transport system
Transport for London
Transport for London is the local government body responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London in England. Its role is to implement the transport strategy and to manage transport services across London...
(including the bus that had exploded) had included posters that carried the quote, "Outright terror... bold and brilliant", and depicted a terrified woman screaming in a tunnel. The film's theatrical distributor in the UK, Pathé
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...
, recalled the posters from their placement in the London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
and reworked the campaign to exclude the word "terror" from advertised reviews of The Descent. Pathé also distributed the new versions to TV and radio stations. The distributor's marketing chief, Anna Butler, said of the new approach, "We changed tack to concentrate on the women involved all standing together and fighting back. That seemed to chime with the prevailing mood of defiance that set in the weekend after the bombs."
Neil Marshall stated in a review "Shauna was pretty upset about it; it was on newspapers all across the county" and cites the attacks as harming the film's box office, as "people were still trapped underground in reality, so no one really wanted to go see a film about people trapped underground...".
Many commentators, including writers for Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
and The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, remarked on the rather unfortunate coincidence.
Due to these events there was some initial concern that the film's release might have been delayed out of sensitivity for the tragedy but Pathé ultimately chose to release the film on schedule, with a slightly retooled advertising campaign; however, the US promotional campaign managed by Lionsgate Films was significantly different from the original European version.
Reception
The Descent premiered at the Scottish horror film festival Dead by DawnDead by Dawn
Dead by Dawn is a film festival in Edinburgh, Scotland specifically devoted to horror films. Established in 1993 by Adele Hartley, this is a discovery festival showcasing mostly independent films, both short films and feature length films...
on 6 July 2005. The film commercially opened on 329 screens in the UK and received limited releases in other European countries, eventually earning more than £6 million in box office receipts. The London bombings
7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United Kingdom, targeting civilians using London's public transport system during the morning rush hour....
in the same month was reported to have affected the box office performance of The Descent.
Based on 164 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, The Descent received an 84% "Certified Fresh" overall approval rating, with the sites consensus stating "Deft direction and strong performances from its all-female cast guide The Descent, a riveting, claustrophobic horror film. In this low-budget import from Scotland, director Neil Marshall has masterfully created a spelunking nightmare, which doubles as a compelling meditation on morality, vengeance, and the depths to which we might go for survival." By comparison, Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
calculated an average score of 71 out of 100 from the 30 reviews it collected. On its debut weekend in the US, The Descent opened with a three-day gross of $8.8 million, and finished with $26,005,908. Total worldwide box office receipts are $57,051,053.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
's editor, Jim Emerson, reviewed the film for Ebert's column whilst Ebert was on leave due to surgery, giving it four out of four stars. He wrote, "This is the fresh, exciting summer movie I've been wanting for months. Or for years, it seems."
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
described The Descent as "one of the better horror entertainments of the last few years", calling it "indisputably and pleasurably nerve-jangling". Dargis applauded the claustrophobic atmosphere of the film, though she perceived sexual overtones in the all-female cast with their labored breathing and sweaty clothing. Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...
thought that the film devolved into a guessing game of who would survive, though he praised Marshall's "nightmare imagery" for generating scares that work better than other horror films. Rodriguez also noted the attempt to add dimension to the female characters but felt that the actresses were unable to perform.
Top-ten lists, 2006:
- 7th - Sight & SoundSight & SoundSight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...
- 10th — Nathan Lee, Village Voice
- 10th — Stephen Hunter, The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
- 1st - Bravo's 13 Even Scarier Movie Moments
Bloody Disgusting
Bloody Disgusting
Bloody Disgusting is a website that covers horror movies with reviews, interviews and news. It is currently run by Brad Miska, and Tom Owen. According to one source, the site has 1.5 million unique visitors and 20 million page views each month. It is widely considered to be the "world's most...
ranked the film third in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "One of the scariest films of this or any decade... Ultimately, The Descent is the purest kind of horror film – ruthless, unforgiving, showing no mercy."
Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer
The Charlotte Observer
The Charlotte Observer, serving Charlotte, North Carolina and its metro area, is the largest newspaper, in terms of circulation, in North Carolina and South Carolina...
thought a weakness of The Descent was the failure of the writer to explain the evolution of the creature, though he said, "Their clicking and howling, used for echolocation and communication, makes them more alien; this otherness gives humans permission to mutilate them without seeming too disgusting to be sympathetic." Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
thought that the crawlers should have been left out of the film, believing, "Watching those gray, slithering beings chasing and biting the women makes it hard to maintain any suspension of disbelief."
Sequel
A sequel to The Descent was filmed at Ealing StudiosEaling Studios
Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in West London. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on the site ever since...
in London during 2008 and was released on 2 December 2009 in the UK.
External links
- The Descent entry in The A.V. ClubThe A.V. ClubThe A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
's New Cult Canon