THE DESCENT Decoded: The Best British Horror of the Century

…, but also considering the director himself, about whom—when reviewing his debut, The Hallow—I wrote in superlatives. I still believe he is a promising filmmaker (as the last 30–40 minutes of The Nun confirm), who is much better at crafting striking, visually appealing, and even exciting moments rather than relying on sudden jump scares, where silence is abruptly broken by loud sound effects or music. I previously compared his earlier film, in terms of execution, to The Descent, and I do not doubt that Hardy will one day fulfill the expectations placed upon him.

Meanwhile, The Descent, which I recently rewatched after about a decade since my last viewing, still leaves a stunning impression. Back then, at the very beginning of the 21st century, amidst a flood of many bloody, often nihilistic horror films (all the Saw and Hostel movies, the French Extremity, and the diabolical works of Rob Zombie), Neil Marshall’s film stood out with a more human face, featuring an almost exclusively female cast and a theme of grief, which was made the foundation of its horror. The director does not shy away from brutality and blood, but these elements stem from something other than merely pushing boundaries or indulging in the creator’s specific sense of humor. As a result, the horror was met with applause not only from audiences but also from critics.

The film begins with a joyful and lively rafting trip of three friends, only to hit the viewer moments later with a car accident scene in which the protagonist’s husband and daughter are killed. The crash is sudden, swift, and bloody, and the death (especially of the child) sets a grim tone for the entire story. A year passes. Sarah is still grieving the loss of her loved ones, but she is convinced to take a trip to the United States to explore underground caves. Six women, no men, and a desire to experience an intensely claustrophobic adventure that threatens hallucinations, breathing problems, and paranoia. Shortly after descending underground, the protagonists become trapped—the way back is blocked, and their only chance of escape lies in moving forward into an unknown cave system. Soon, however, they discover that someone—or rather, something—lives there.

I had forgotten how much the initial tragedy influences the rest of the plot. The car accident, Sarah’s dream in which she runs through a hospital corridor as the lights go out, and the harrowing scene where she learns she has lost her husband and daughter—all of this, along with Sam McCurdy’s cold cinematography, David Julyan’s simultaneously ominous and melodramatic music, and Shauna Macdonald’s powerful performance, occurs within the first few minutes, before the film’s title even appears. This ensures that the later parts—whether showing the women having fun and joking or their tension-filled attempts to escape—are imbued with a mournful tone. Comparisons to Don’t Look Now, which preceded it by 30 years, are entirely fitting, as both films depict protagonists who have not come to terms with the loss of a child, who are broken, and in some way, dead inside. There, the husband takes his wife to Venice while restoring a church; here, friends encourage Sarah to join them on a trip to the other side of the world to drown out the pain through a more active form of escape. The resolution is entirely different in both films, yet the climax is just as shocking as in the 1970s classic.

Before it reaches that point, Marshall—who not only directed but also wrote the film—demonstrates his talent for constructing no-exit situations, primarily resulting from the characters’ personalities and a series of bad choices. Each woman is distinct in at least one aspect. Sarah still cannot recover from her tragedy, her closest friend Beth (Alex Reid) is the most level-headed, then there’s Juno (Natalie Mendoza), who looks and behaves like Lara Croft, though not as reckless as the youngest in the group, Holly (Nora-Jane Noone). Becca and Sam (Saskia Mulder and MyAnna Buring) are sisters, which, in some way, binds them more to each other than to the rest. Marshall portrays the protagonists as strong and resourceful in a team, capable of organizing themselves, even when they realize the terrifying truth that they are in an entirely different cave than planned. The deliberate actions of one of them—to gain recognition by discovering an unknown system—bring mortal danger, yet even then, they manage to make effective use of what they have on hand, avoiding panic and hysteria. Until the moment when the director introduces the monsters.

Anyone who has seen or even heard of The Descent knows that, in the simplest terms, it is a film about a group of women fighting subterranean beasts. These creatures appear late, well past the halfway point of the movie, yet the audience is surprisingly prepared for the entrance of this supernatural element into a story that, until then, had been very realistic, though not devoid of fear. A prime example is one of the best jump scares I can remember—arguably unnecessary for the plot—taking place even before the protagonists enter the cave. Here, Marshall’s mastery becomes evident, as he meticulously lays the groundwork for the horror revelation so that it does not feel like just a twist, as was the case in From Dusk Till Dawn. At one point, the music begins to pulse ominously, reminiscent of The Thing’s main theme, the traces of past human presence found along the way indicate that others were trapped there forever since the cave remains officially undiscovered, and the laughter of a child that Sarah hears in the underground tunnels sends chills down the spine.

What matters most, however, is the prevailing gloom from the very beginning, reinforced by successive tragedies. These drive The Descent’s plot, and with each death (as at a certain point, the screen is flooded with real torrents of blood), we learn more about the characters, and they learn more about themselves. The one presumed to be weak will find within herself not only strength but also cruelty, while the seemingly strongest will pay for her recklessness and betrayal. Ultimately, even the most ruthless and battle-hardened will lose—if not to the monsters, then to guilt and pain, which they will find impossible to silence. Thus, the most brutal scene turns out to be the final one, which was omitted for American audiences—the film ended a minute earlier in U.S. theaters.

Years after its premiere, The Descent is revisited with the awareness of the so-called post-horror movement, the prior explosion of found-footage aesthetics, the return of Stephen King to prominence, and the still-thriving demonic franchises of James Wan. Compared to today’s horror films, the British production stands out as a horror that finds its strength not in altering genre conventions or exploiting narrative tropes but in focusing on the most fundamental sources of fear. We are afraid of darkness, tight spaces, cold, and losing our loved ones—and Marshall delivers all of this in the first hour of his film before shocking us with even more nightmarish ideas and imagery. The pickaxe comes into action, piercing various body parts, throats are torn open, entrails devoured, and skulls crushed. Fear turns into terror, and emotional pain gives way to physical agony. Suffice it to say that by the end of the film, we are as drained as the main characters.

Many British filmmakers have tried to replicate The Descent’s success by utilizing nature’s eerie beauty, but these films—whether the more realistic Eden Lake and Rabid or the supernatural The Hallow, The Ritual, and even the particularly disastrous The Descent: Part 2 (directed by the first film’s editor, Jon Harris)—ultimately pale in comparison to Marshall’s masterpiece. Despite some flaws, The Descent remains a gripping and masterfully crafted horror film, led with such confidence that it is easy to forgive its minor shortcomings.

Marshall’s star shone at its brightest after the release of only his second film. His first was the well-received Dog Soldiers (2002), in which the training maneuvers of a group of British soldiers turned into a struggle for survival against werewolves. This not entirely serious horror film was a harbinger of what was yet to come, but after The Descent, we did not see an equally impressive development in the English director’s career. Doomsday (2008) turned out to be nothing more than a dull tribute (and at times, an outright plagiarism) of post-apocalyptic classics, especially Escape from New York and Mad Max, while Centurion (2010) suffered from a stylistic approach that had more in common with the director’s earlier horror films than with historical cinema. For now, he remains the creator of what is probably the best British horror film of the 21st century (its only real competitor for that title being 28 Days Later by Danny Boyle, followed closely by Kill List by Ben Wheatley), but also an unfulfilled filmmaker, so far too immersed in a B-movie aesthetic to deliver another film on the level of The Descent.