The Descent was, for a long time, one of my Everest movies.
I was an unabashed scaredy-cat when it came to horror until my early twenties – the best I could do was watch White Noise because I liked Michael Keaton. And The Descent? This film haunted me even before I saw it. From a hyped release in the UK, to its fast growing reputation with mainstream critics and the horror community alike, I couldn’t get away from that cave, from those monsters, from that horrid, claustrophobic grip. It terrified me before I even saw it, and is now one of my favourite films, horror or otherwise, because it lived up to the terror that it was hinting at me for all those years.
I have a question for the ladies of The Descent: are you out of your minds? I’m not a thrill seeker – the best I do is running from my cat when he is in a particularly bitey mood. So the idea of cave diving as the solution to help your friend, Sarah (Shauna MacDonald), out of the debilitating grief of losing her husband and child in a car accident that she barely survived…all I can say is, what the hell? Therein lies the beauty of director, Neil Marshall’s, choice of location. The caves themselves don’t even need the monsters to deliver the terror – one wrong move could break your ankle, a rock formation that seems stable could pick the time that you are climbing it to collapse. Then you add the Crawlers. I couldn’t even walk on my grandmothers decorative garden stones after I watched this damn film.
The setting, the monsters, and the previous tragedy are bad enough, but there is also the bomb under the proverbial table that one of the friends, Juno (Natalie Mendoza) sleeping with Sarah’s husband before he died (though I wouldn’t put it past Marshall’s twisted sensibilities to keep it pre-death in its entirety, to be honest). Marshall has expertly created a scenario where every aspect is a nightmare: thrilling hobby goes horribly wrong, betrayal of friendship that must be revealed, and a bunch of monsters that are wondering why the hell these people are in their house. Add the fact that The Descent is full of some of the most captivating images in horror cinema (it was a joy finding a picture for this article, let me tell you) and you have a film that fully deserves its legacy as one of the best horror films of the 21st century.
The Descent represents one of the main reasons I eventually got into horror cinema. For years I was scared to go near it, sure that it would be horrific, that it would scar me for life. There are so many films that made me think “is that it?” when it comes to their iconic status. The Descent met and exceeded my expectations by being a monster movie that is also disguised as a cerebral art film. The fact that Neil Marshall would direct sumptuously horrible episodes of Hannibal nearly a decade later didn’t surprise me. The only thing is that, unfortunately for Marshall, The Descent overshadows most of his filmography – but that is the price some directors must pay if they make a classic so early in their careers.
The Descent represents one of the main reasons I eventually got into horror cinema. For years I was scared to go near it, sure that it would be horrific, that it would scar me for life. And, you know what? Twenty years later, I can tell you, for certain, that it did.
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By Kevin Boyle
No But Listen 