GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS

The Descent

(Neil Marshall, UK, 2005)

BY VIOLET LUCCA | November 7, 2024
SHARE:

Outside of the occasional action blockbuster or turgid documentary about the history of women’s sports, there are few spaces for female athletes in film. For every Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, there are 500 other films where lithe actresses stick to running in heels and/or catsuits; sometimes they get to shoot a gun instead of just holding the male lead’s hand while doing some cardio. Neil Marshall’s The Descent creates a very tight, precious cinematic space for women whose physical and mental endurance is equally matched. More than a girls’ trip gone wrong, this anomaly somehow has room for panoramic characterizations, impressive yet non-sexualized displays of physicality, mental and physical endurance, genuine suspense, and subhuman creatures who never get any less unsettling upon repeat viewings.

The film begins with three women—Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), Juno (Natalie Mendoza), and Beth (Alex Reid)—rafting down a craggy rock face against sharp currents as Sarah’s husband and daughter cheer them on from the river bank. (It’s a scene that could either serve as a commercial for a multinational bank or some beauty company that claims to love “real women.”) But the glow of their triumph begins to dim almost immediately: Sarah’s husband Paul takes Juno’s helmet off a bit too tenderly, and the camera lingers on this interaction. What’s happening between the two can only be inferred, as Paul, in the midst of unconvincingly dismissing his wife’s concerns about his aloofness, accidentally drifts into the wrong lane and gets skewered, Argento-style, by some poles flung from an oncoming van.

This tragedy, which also took Sarah’s child, isn’t lingered on but instead serves as the impetus for another extreme girls’ trip one year later. Sarah, Juno (the lone American friend), and Beth (who knew about the affair but said nothing) are joined by a few new (but familiar to them) party members: sisters Sam (MyAnna Buring) and Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), and Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), Juno’s youthful, slightly butchy acolyte. Along with showing some genuine, unforced banter and hang-out time with these women, Marshall reveals that hubris isn’t an exclusively male failing. Juno, who didn’t stick around very long after the accident and organized this get-together, tells her friends that they’re going to a popular Appalachian cave; instead, she’s actually taken them to an unmapped cave system. By the time the other women find out this sleight of hand, there’s been a cave-in and they really can’t turn back. Ironically, when the group asks Juno why she’s done this, she claims the intention was to get “us back to who we used to be.” Mountain Rescue thinks they’re at the other cave, so no help is coming.

The prospect of trying to find your way out of an unknown cave that nobody knows you’re inside, even for a seasoned adventurer, is terrifying. However, the dimensions of The Descent’s cave have been designed in a way that draws out how otherworldly and dangerous cave systems are. Despite their size, the women can barely crawl through some passageways, while the wider areas offer different types of physical pain and mental destabilization. It returns us to a very primal fear: everything beyond a foot in front of them is pitch black, they have no protection from falling water or the cold, and their only methods of navigation (light, wind) aren’t entirely reliable. Then, when they least expect it, comes the most ancient of all fears: humanoid predators that are far faster and better evolved to exist in this subterranean environment than they are. Our women, despite their strength and knowledge, are well and truly fucked. Marshall again leans into the unnatural-yet-natural aura of the cave, as the scenes where Sarah fights against these “crawlers” are tinted an eerie red, as she’s bathed in blood and the meager light sources at her disposal. (Other members of the party, who are utilizing flares and lighters, get photographed in a similarly badass fashion.)

Though The Descent plays upon our inborn fear of the unknown and the wild, it ends with a confrontation about the unspoken and interpersonal: Sarah confronts Juno about accidentally killing Rebecca (and then lying about it), as well as Juno’s affair with Paul. Sarah leaves Juno to a horde of the crawlers and makes her way out of the cave. Screaming with fear and joy, she makes it back to one of their jeeps; oddly, it’s unlocked. As she sits in the driver’s seat, huffing in disbelief, she turns to see Juno sitting next to her and begins to scream. Whether it’s a dream, guilt, trauma, or something more supernatural, it’s clear that Sarah will never leave the cave. That inability to escape a place, a person, a memory, a childhood, a job, or any other number of things is a terror we all have to contend with to some degree; for someone like Sarah, who’s always looking to move forward and find new adventures, it must be hell. 🩸

VIOLET LUCCA

is the author of David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials. She is the former digital producer at Film Comment and the host of its podcast, as well as former VP of Digital at Harper’s Magazine.

X: @unbuttonmyeyes

How to see The Descent

The film is also on DVD and Blu-ray.
RELATED CONTENT
    FRESH BLOOD
GUIDE | CORE HORROR
(David Cronenberg, USA, 1986)

It’s an unfortunate fact of life: even super-smart women sometimes end up with terrible boyfriends. This, along with a very different tragic, universal reality—everyone’s body...

BY VIOLET LUCCA  |  October 31, 2022

REVIEW
(Coralie Fargeat, UK/USA/France, 2024)

The Substance opens with its simplest, most natural image: a raw chicken’s egg, the yolk yellow and dewy, lying flat on a white background.

BY VIOLET LUCCA  |  September 21, 2024

REVIEW
(Kate Dolin, Ireland, 2021)

Stories told within the framework of family drama can sometimes resemble folklore—digressive, dark, suspiciously elliptical, patent fabrications that only bear hints of an ancient...

BY VIOLET LUCCA | March 25, 2022

RECOMMENDED
    RAVENOUS
GUIDE | ORIGINS

Supernatural

(Victor Halperin, USA, 1933)

This pre-Code offering packs a lot of story into its typically brisk running time, with several plot threads weaving together a (not always successful) tapestry of spooky and criminal doings.

READ MORE >

BY  ANN OLSSON  |  Month 00, 2021

REVIEW

The Keep

(Michael Mann, USA, 1983)

In what could be the fastest-resulting rape revenge movie, a drunken lout brutally forces himself on Ida, the young woman who doesn't return his affections, during a party over Labor Day.

READ MORE >

BY  LAURA KERN  |  Month 00, 2021

REVIEW

We Need To Do Something

(Sean King O'Grady, USA, 2021)

Beast is a lot of movies in one package - fractured fairy tale, belated-coming-of-age story, psychological drama, regional horror film - but above all it's a calling card for its leading lady, Jessie Buckley.

READ MORE >

BY  LAURA KERN  |  Month 00, 2021

🖨 📄