The Descent

For the book by Jeff Long, see The Descent (novel). For other similarly named films, see Descent (2005 film) and Descent (2007 film). For other uses, see Descent (disambiguation).
The Descent

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Neil Marshall
Produced by Christian Colson
Written by Neil Marshall
Starring Shauna Macdonald
Natalie Mendoza
Alex Reid
Saskia Mulder
MyAnna Buring
Nora-Jane Noone
Music by David Julyan
Cinematography Sam McCurdy
Edited by Jon Harris
Production
company
Celador Films
Northmen Productions
Distributed by Pathé (Europe)
Lionsgate (North America)
Release dates
  • 6 July 2005 (2005-07-06) (Dead by Dawn)
  • 8 July 2005 (2005-07-08) (UK, Ireland)
  • 4 August 2006 (2006-08-04) (US)
Running time
 100 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget £3.5 million[1]
Box office $57.1 million[2]

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 troglofaunal flesh-eating humanoids.

Filming took place in the United Kingdom. Exterior scenes were filmed at Ashridge Park, Buckinghamshire/Hertfordshire. Because the filmmakers considered it too dangerous and time-consuming to shoot in an actual cave, interior scenes were filmed on sets built at Pinewood Studios near London. 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.

A sequel, titled The Descent Part 2, was released in 2009 and depicts events that take place two days after the end of the original film. It was successful, earning twice as much as the film's budget; however, not as much as the original and was not as favorably reviewed.

Plot

On her way back from whitewater rafting with her friends Juno (Natalie Mendoza) and Beth (Alex Reid), Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), along with her husband Paul (Oliver Milburn) and their daughter Jessica (Molly Kayll) get involved in a car accident when Paul is distracted. Paul and Jessica are killed, but Sarah survives.

One year later, Sarah and her friends Juno, Beth, Sam (MyAnna Buring), Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), and newcomer Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) are reunited at a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. While spelunking, Juno apologises to Sarah for not being there for her after the accident, but Sarah is distant. As the group moves through a passage, it collapses behind them, trapping them. After a heated discussion, Juno admits she led the group into an unknown cave system instead of the fully explored cave system like they originally planned, and that rescue is impossible because of this. She then tells Sarah that she led them into the unknown cave in the hopes of restoring their relationship, but Sarah rebuffs her.

As the group presses forward, they discover climbing equipment from a previous spelunker, and a cave painting that suggests an exit exists. Holly, thinking she sees sunlight, runs ahead, but falls down a hole and breaks her leg. As the others help Holly, Sarah wanders off and observes a pale, humanoid creature (called "crawlers" in the credits) drinking at a pool before it scampers away. Later, the group comes across a den of animal bones, and are suddenly attacked by a crawler. Holly is injured and dragged away by the crawler to her death, Sarah is knocked out by a fall, and Juno accidentally stabs Beth through the neck with a pickaxe after mistaking her for the crawler.

Sarah awakens to find herself in a den of human and animal carcasses, and witnesses Holly's body being consumed by a crawler. Juno discovers markings pointing to a specific path through the caves. After regrouping with Sam and Rebecca, and realizing the crawlers' hunting methods, Juno tells them the markings she discovered may point to the way out, but she will not leave without Sarah. Meanwhile, Sarah encounters Beth, who tells Sarah that Juno wounded her and abandoned her, and also reveals that Juno had an affair with Paul before his death. In pain, Beth tells Sarah to give her a mercy killing, Sarah reluctantly does so by bashing her head in with a rock. She then encounters a family of crawlers, but manages to kill them all, being covered in blood in the process. Afterwards, she has a psychotic breakdown. Elsewhere, Juno, Sam, and Rebecca are pursued by a large group of crawlers. Sam and Rebecca are killed, but Juno escapes.

Juno encounters Sarah and lies to her about seeing Beth die. After defeating a group of crawlers, Sarah confronts Juno, revealing that she knows that she wounded Beth and left her for dead, and also about the affair. She then strikes Juno in the leg with a pickaxe and leaves her to die to a group of approaching crawlers. Sarah falls down a hole and is knocked unconscious. She awakens, manages to escape the cave, runs to her vehicle, and speeds off. Upon seeing Juno sitting next to her, Sarah screams and reawakens to find herself still in the cavern, revealing that the events since her previous awakening were a dream. She hallucinates about a smiling Jessica close by her, just as the calls of the crawlers grow louder.

Alternate versions

For the US theatrical release, the film ends with the appearance of Juno in the car, and the scene where Sarah hallucinates her daughter in the torchlight was removed entirely. The Unrated DVD released in the US includes the original ending. This ending leads to the events of the next film.[3]

Cast

Production

When Neil Marshall'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, emphasising, "They are very different films."[4] 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 realised 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.[5]

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.[6]

Filming

While The Descent was set in North America, the film was shot entirely in the United Kingdom. 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.[5]

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."[5] Marshall also said at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival that he was inspired by Italian horror films of the past, in particular by Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.

Simon Bowles designed the maze of caves for The Descent. Reviews credited Bowles: "Bowles’ beautifully designed cave sets conjure a world of subterranean darkness."[7] There were 21 cave Sets, built by Rod Vass and his company Armordillo Ltd. using a unique system of polyurethane sprayed rock that was developed for this production.

Production of The Descent was in competition with a big budget 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. The 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.[5]

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, 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. The film has aired on Canada's The Movie Network with the original ending aired the cut ending. In contrast, the American channels Syfy, IFC and Canada's Space 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

Crawler

Crawlers, as portrayed in The Descent (left) and The Descent 2 (right)
Classification Cave dwelling hominid
First appearance The Descent
Last appearance The Descent Part 2
Created by Neil Marshall (director)
Paul Hyett (designer)

In the film, the women encounter underground creatures referred to as crawlers by the production crew. Marshall described the crawlers as cavemen 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.[8]

Conception

Director Neil Marshall 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".[9] 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."[10]

The crawlers were designed by Paul Hyett, a makeup and prosthetics creator.[11] 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.[12] The director barred the film's 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."[13]

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".[11]

Description

Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald described the crawlers as "blind, snarling cave-dwellers, looking much like Gollum's bigger kin".[14] 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.[15] 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."[16] 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.[17]

Marketing

The skull of women motif used in some advertising material is based on Philippe Halsman's In Voluptas Mors photograph.[18]

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."[19]

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...".[20]

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.

Release

Reception

“ ...When it was released in July [2005], this claustrophobic story of six women who stumble across something nasty on a caving trip got arguably the best reviews of any Brit pic this year. ”
— Variety columnist Adam Dawtrey[21]

The Descent premiered at the Scottish horror film festival Dead by Dawn on 6 July 2005.[22] The film opened commercially to the public in the UK on 10 July 2005, showing on 329 screens and earned £2.6 million. The film received limited releases in other European countries.[23] The London bombings in the same month was reported to have affected the box office performance of The Descent.[21]

The film has received critical acclaim. Based on 171 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, The Descent received an 85% "Certified Fresh" overall approval rating, with the site's 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."[24] By comparison, Metacritic calculated an average score of 71 out of 100 from 30 reviews.[25] 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.[2]

Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 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."[26]

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 laboured breathing and sweaty clothing.[27] 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.[28]

Top-ten lists, 2006:[29]

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."[30] In the early 2010s, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films.[31] The Descent placed at number 39 on their top 100 list.[32]

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."[33] 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."[34]

Home media

The Descent was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 26 December 2006.[35][36] The film is also slated for a 3D re-release by Samsung as part of a deal between Samsung and Lionsgate to do so for several of Lionsgate's films.[37]

Sequel

Main article: The Descent Part 2

A sequel to The Descent was filmed at Ealing Studios in London during 2008 and was released on 2 December 2009 in the UK.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Descent". Future Movies. 12 October 2006.
  2. 1 2 "The Descent (2006)". Box Office Mojo. 12 October 2006. Retrieved 9 November 2012.
  3. ↑ Fall Frights: THE DESCENT (Film Review)
  4. ↑ Macnab, Geoffrey (4 July 2005). "Brace yourself: the British horror film is about to rise from the grave". The Guardian (Guardian Media Group).
  5. 1 2 3 4 Clarke, Donald (9 July 2005). "Subterranean sick blues". The Irish Times (Irish Times Trust).
  6. ↑ Listed in the film's credits.
  7. ↑ Mark Kermode in The Observer.
  8. ↑ Millar, John (3 July 2005). "Millar's movie: Shauna loved working in dark". Sunday Mail (Trinity Mirror).
  9. ↑ Moore, Roger (10 August 2006). "Secrets unearthed: Spelunking with Neil Marshall". Orlando Sentinel (Tribune Company).
  10. ↑ Morrison, Nick (7 July 2005). "Descent into hell". The Northern Echo (Newsquest).
  11. 1 2 Jones, Alan. "The Darker Depths of The Descent 2". Fangoria (Starlog Group). Archived from the original on 22 June 2008. Retrieved 26 June 2008.
  12. ↑ Williams, David E (September 2006). "Creepy crawlers". American Cinematographer (American Society of Cinematographers) 87 (9): 18, 20, 22, 24.
  13. ↑ Davis, Guy (16 December 2006). "Natalie's a gung-ho alpha female". Geelong Advertiser (News Corporation).
  14. ↑ Rodriguez, Rene (4 August 2006). "Down deep, it's a real fright". The Miami Herald (The McClatchy Company).
  15. ↑ Tseng, Douglas (7 December 2005). "Hold on tight, The Descent is deep". The Straits Times (Singapore Press Holdings).
  16. ↑ Germain, David (4 August 2006). "'Descent' takes viewers into the depths of horror". The Press of Atlantic City. Associated Press.
  17. ↑ Neil Marshall (writer/director) (2005). The Descent (DVD). Pathé.
  18. ↑ Dali’s Skull Illusion Still Inspires
  19. ↑ Solomons, Jason (17 July 2005). "Review: Trailer Trash". The Observer (Guardian Media Group).
  20. ↑ Butane, Johnny (30 July 2006). "Marshall, Neil (The Descent)". Dread Central. Retrieved 23 June 2008.
  21. 1 2 Dawtrey, Adam (16 October 2005). "London Eye". Variety (Reed Business Information).
  22. ↑ Cox, Roger; Andrew Eaton (2 July 2005). "Going out". The Scotsman (Johnston Press).
  23. ↑ Cinema release: 8 July (6 September 2005). "UK MOVIES – The Descent". BBC. Retrieved 9 November 2012.
  24. ↑ "The Descent". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
  25. ↑ "The Descent: Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
  26. ↑ Ebert, Roger (4 August 2006). "The Descent". Chicago Sun-Times (Sun-Times Media Group). Retrieved 23 June 2008.
  27. ↑ Dargis, Manohla (4 August 2006). /04desc.html "Six Women, a Cave and Some Monsters" Check |url= value (help). The New York Times.
  28. ↑ Rodriguez, Rene (4 August 2006). "Down deep, it's a real fright". The Miami Herald.
  29. ↑ "Metacritic 2008 Film Critic Top Ten Lists 2006". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 6 February 2009. Retrieved 20 June 2009.
  30. ↑ "00's Retrospect: Bloody Disgusting's Top 20 Films of the Decade...Part 4". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved 3 January 2010.
  31. ↑ "The 100 best horror films". Time Out. Retrieved 13 April 2014.
  32. ↑ NF. "The 100 best horror films: the list". Time Out. Retrieved 13 April 2014.
  33. ↑ Toppman, Lawrence (4 August 2006). "A gripping 'Descent' into depths of horror". The Charlotte Observer (The McClatchy Company).
  34. ↑ Wilmington, Michael (4 August 2006). "'Descent' chills deflated by absurd plot elements". Chicago Tribune (Tribune Company).
  35. ↑ "The Descent (Original Unrated Cut)". Cinema Blend.
  36. ↑ "The Descent (Blu-ray)". High Def Digest.
  37. ↑ "Lionsgate teams up with Samsung to convert more films to 3D, starts with Gamer, Crank and Bangkok Dangerous". Engadget. 1 September 2013.

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