The Descent (2006)

★★★½
Neil Marshall's The Descent understands the inherent fear-inducing components of cave exploration—the tight spaces, the darkness, the twisting tunnels—and combines them with the creature feature to come away with this intense and raw tale of terror. This movie establishes just enough of a backstory to get its characters into an inescapable situation, and from there it turns the monsters loose and becomes a harrowing spectacle of intense frights and melancholy outcomes. Marshall, fresh off the success of Dog Soldiers, establishes himself as a director who can take the barest of plots and apply layer upon layer of suspense. His project is an exercise in minimalism. The setting offers few opportunities for the characters to improvise any kind of plan, yet Marshall works within the confines of this scenario to heighten the tension.

The movie opens with tragedy. After a family outing in the U.K., Sarah Carter (Shauna Macdonald) loses her husband and daughter in a traffic accident. The experience was so traumatizing that, as we will see throughout the course of the movie, she experiences hallucinations of her daughter. One year later, her friend Juno (Natalie Mendoza) organizes a trip to the Appalachian Mountains in the U.S. to explore a cave. Along for the ride are sisters Sam and Rebecca (MyAnna Buring and Saskia Mulder), Elizabeth (Alex Reid) and Holly (Nora-Jane Noone). The women are experienced adventure seekers, so cave exploration is nothing new to them. Juno hopes that this trip will help Sarah cope with her loss. Sarah's friends are very supportive and view this vacation as a way to get Sarah back to doing what she loves.

The women arrive at the cave opening and descend into the darkness. Through an unfortunate mishap, the tunnel that led deeper into the cave system collapses, sealing the women inside with no knowledge of what lies ahead. Juno did not inform her friends that this is a new and uncharted cave system. She opted for this location instead of a popular spot that she denounces as a "tourist trap." As the women venture deeper into the cave's vast depths, they realize they are not alone. Blind humanoid creatures that have evolved in the darkness stalk them at every turn. What started out as a friendly day trip turns quickly into a bloodbath. The creatures use sound to navigate the tunnels, can climb on walls and ceilings, possess sharp teeth and move quickly to tear their prey apart. The women have almost no resources at their disposal.

This is where Marshall gets his chance to show what he can do. Marshall employs jump scares at the right time without overdoing it, and he uses the darkness and narrow confines of the cave to highlight the women's dire situation. The director adds one crucial element to the story to add a speck of hope. There is evidence that someone has been here before, and a way out is possible. Whether this all leads to a resolution I will leave for the viewer. I mention it because without the possibility of hope, we are just watching a technical exercise. The creature effects and gore are very good, but are the characters running around screaming for our entertainment, or will their fear lead to a payoff? By opting for a natural conclusion that properly ends the story, Marshall ensured that the pain and anguish experienced by his characters was not a showcase of suffering just for the sake of it.

The women are at an extreme disadvantage, but that faint glimmer of hope—that possibility of finding an exit—is a powerful motivator. The women need it to give them direction. We as the viewers need it too, because it gives the characters an opportunity to succeed (or fail) at achieving something, which translates into an emotional response from us. We can either take a victory lap with the survivors or be pulled down if they come up short. To look at it another way, imagine an action movie that features an indestructible hero who navigates every obstacle with ease. I've seen my fair share of these. There's no chance to lose, and therefore little chance for us to be pulled strongly into the story. The Descent finds the perfect balance between pitting its heroines against danger from every angle and giving them enough rope to save themselves, or at least making us believe the rope is long enough. We really don't know, and that uncertainty is another of the movie's strong points. We ask, "Is the movie really going there?" Towards the end, the camera makes an ominous move. It is the answer to that question. It is also a form of catharsis. Neil Marshall uses the opportunity to let the air out of the balloon after filling it to the point of bursting. He lets us off the hook. Whether he does for Sarah and her friends is another story.

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