The Descent

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.