Betrayals, claustrophobia, murders, and strange subterranean creatures have all contributed to the success of today’s film series. If you enjoy adventure-horror films, you’ll enjoy today’s selection. ‘The Descent’ turns survival horror into a bloodbath for the ages, complete with equally brutal and horrible deaths.
The monsters in this series, however, are what truly elevates these films to cult classic status. The Crawlers convert The Descent into a horrific horror film from a simple narrative. Because the monsters’ genesis narrative is kept brief and cryptic, the creatures become much more terrifying. Because they lack a genesis, they are chaotic and unpredictable, making them the ideal predator.
‘The Descent,’ a British horror film released in 2005, was written and directed by Neil Marshall. Six girls are followed as they explore a subterranean system and strive to survive against the humanoid creatures who reside there. Following the critical and box office success of ‘The Descent,’ the filmmakers saw a chance to follow it up with a sequel that takes off right where the original one left off. So, let us take a deep plunge into the cave’s depths and investigate the terrifying beasts that await us.
Face Your Deepest Fear – The Descent (2005)
Neil Marshall’s ‘The Descent,’ although first denying the project for fear of being typecast as a horror film director, was an instant box-office success when it was premiered in UK theatres in July 2005. Marshall agreed to make ‘The Descent’ on the condition that he could go against the plan for a mixed cast and cast solely women in the key parts, despite the fact that his last picture ‘Dog Soldiers’ (2002) only had one female lead character.
Women, he argued, were grossly underrepresented in the horror genre. The movie did spectacularly well and beat out ‘The Cave’, which was a movie with the same concept, that was released in the same week as ‘The Descent, by a mile.
A group of pals enjoys whitewater rafting in Scotland at the start of the film. Everything appears to be well, but on the way home, one of the friends, Sarah, is involved in a vehicle accident with her husband Paul and daughter. Unfortunately, the accident results in the death of both Paul and her daughter.
The movie then shifts focus to all the friends reuniting one year after the incident to cheer up Sarah and go on a cave exploration expedition in the Appalachian Mountains cave system in North Carolina, USA. The group includes Juno, Sarah, Beth, Sam, Holly, and Rebecca.
The gang follows Juno’s lead, who had allegedly explored the area and was familiar with the finest ways. Between Juno and Sarah, there is also apparent friction and hatred. When they sit down for their lunch break, Juno confronts it, emotionally apologizing to Sarah for not being there for her after her family died.
After lunch, they continue on and reach the cave. They start exploring the passageways and spaces but as it is with cave systems, one mistake and you are in danger. A passage collapses as soon as the entire group crosses, with Sarah making it through in the nick of time. Holly had made the mistake of rushing into a tiny crevice and they all paid the price for it.
After a heated dispute, Juno discloses that she has guided them into an unexplored tunnel system rather than the well-known Boreham caverns that they had planned to see. Only a few people knew about their expedition, and they believe they were in the other cave system, making rescue difficult. They’re now trapped and can’t get out.
Filming in a cave was deemed too dangerous by the filmmakers. They chose to build one instead since it would take much too long. Twenty-one separate cave sets were constructed for the film.
These were meticulously repeated with various camera angles, set dressing, and lighting to create an almost infinite network of interconnected tunnels and caves. For authenticity, the creators frequently confined the illumination of the sets to flashlights, helmet lights, and light sticks that the protagonists brought with them.
Juno warns them that their only chance of survival is to keep traveling and locate a path to the surface. She also tells all the others that the reason she brought them to this new cave system is that she wanted to discover it with her friends but they all ignore her reasoning because what she did was extremely reckless and had landed all of them in a huge mess.
Sarah rejects Juno’s intimate revelation that she led them into the unknown cave in the hopes of rekindling their romance. A cave painting and climbing equipment left by a previous visitor is discovered by the group, implying that there is a second exit. Juno maintains the latter a secret to keep the group’s spirits up.
Things begin to deteriorate slowly but steadily. After falling down a hole, Holly fractures her leg. The party chooses to carry Holly when her fracture is stabilized with a splint. While the others aid Holly, Sarah walks off and discovers a pale, humanoid person sipping from a pool. When Sarah gasps, it scampers away into the darkness. Others believe Sarah is hallucinating, but she believes she saw a human. They are assaulted by one of the creatures shortly after.
The crawler shreds Holly’s throat as the party scatters. Sarah then trips, falls, and collapses. The sequence in which the women first saw the crawler through the night vision camera was their first true look at the creature. Neil Marshall had separated the performers so the women wouldn’t see the costumed monsters before the show.
Juno tries to protect Holly from the crawlers, but when she hears a person approaching from behind her, she whips around and stabs it in the neck with a pickaxe, thinking it’s a crawler, but it’s Beth. She falls to the ground. Beth grabs Juno’s pendant, but Juno stumbles backward in horror as Beth reaches out to her.
Shocked, Juno leaves Beth to die and finally tracks down Sam and Rebecca and saves them from a crawler. Juno claims to have discovered a route out, but she refuses to leave without Sarah. Others hesitantly agree to assist her with her search.
Sarah wakes up to see Beth, who is gravely injured, informing her that Juno has wronged her and abandoned her. Sarah is skeptical of Beth until she discovers Juno’s pendant, which reveals Juno’s relationship with Sarah’s husband. Sarah then executes Beth as a mercy killing. She then comes across a swarm of crawlers and destroys them. A large gang of crawlers is pursuing Juno, Sam, and Rebecca elsewhere. Sam and Rebecca die at the hands of the crawlers and Juno flees by leaping into a chasm.
When Sarah and Juno cross paths, Sarah discloses that she knows everything and abandons Juno after hurting her in the leg with a pickaxe. Even at the end of the movie, we don’t really know if Sarah managed to make it out or if she hallucinated her escape.
Despite the fact that much of the film is shot in the darkness of the caves, there are some magnificent pictures in which the group’s torches, infrared on their video camera, and bright red flares are used as light sources to emphasize the fantastic set design.
To create the varied spaces, Production Designer Simon Bowles developed sets of ‘stone’ walls that were reconfigured into new places for each shot. There are some violent scenes at the end of the film, and the color of blood is so rich and saturated – in stark contrast to the cave’s gloomy tones – that it makes for some amazing visuals.
The fact that all of the visual effects are genuine and made with special effects make-up and prosthetics creates an authentic atmosphere for the characters in the film is equally stunning. You are never dragged out of the movie because something appears to be unrealistic.
Fear runs deep. Revenge runs deeper – The Descent: Part 2 (2009)
The sequel was released three years after the first film’s popularity. Jon Harris edited the first film, ‘The Descent’ (2005). He returned as director and editor for ‘The Descent: Part 2’ (2009), marking his directing debut. He returned to his formal employment as an editor after that, with this film serving as his lone directing credit.
Two days after the events of the last film, a scared and blood-covered Sarah finally manages to escape from the cave, with no recollection of what transpired within. She is transported to the hospital, where part of her blood is found to match Juno Kaplan’s.
Sheriff Vaines orders Sarah, his deputy Ellen Rios, and three specialists – Dan, Greg, and Cath – to return to the cave in order to locate the missing women. With the help of a sniffer dog, a new entrance is discovered. The members of the squad are led down an abandoned mine shaft by the creepy Ed Oswald.
While traveling through the abandoned mine and into the caverns, the gang comes across Rebecca’s mutilated remains, which causes Sarah to have memories of the crawlers. While going down a small cave channel, Sarah gets a protracted flashback of the past events and assaults Vaines, Greg, and Elen in a tight rage before escaping further into the tunnels.
Vaines pursues Sarah but finally runs into a crawler and fires a shot, causing a section of the cave to collapse. This separates Cath from the rest of the gang, trapping her in a rock choke. Elen, Dan, and Greg uncover the video camera used by Holly in the first film, in a room full of bones.
They see the footage, which depicts the ladies being assaulted by cave-dwelling crawlers. The sequel’s video camera shots were shot with the same actors as the previous film. Neil Marshall, the original film’s executive producer and director, intended to build on the recording made by Holly on her camera in the first film.
The three are then separated after being attacked by a bunch of crawlers. The crawlers were slightly revamped for this sequel by director Jon Harris. Apart from having darker skin tones that help them blend in better, they appear more savage, with more scars and deformities that signal years of inbreeding. They also have multiple rows of teeth, similar to a shark, for shredding flesh.
Elen begins calling for assistance in alerting the crawlers to her position, but Sarah interrupts her, reminding her that the crawlers are blind and hunt by sound. As the two watches, a crawler attacks and murders Dan, tearing his throat open and taking him away. Cath later breaks free from the rock constriction, killing a crawler in the process, before colliding with Greg.
The two climb away from a crawler, using their radio to deflect the crawler’s attention away from them. They go deeper into the cave and discover Sam’s corpse suspended above the abyss where she was killed in the first film.
They plan to use her body to swing across the chasm, but they are assaulted by crawlers. Cath makes it to the other side when Greg falls over the abyss while attacking a female crawler. Cath is ambushed and killed as well, once she crosses to the other side.
Elen and Sarah continue their exploration of the cave and kill another crawler. Elen makes a video message on her phone in case she dies, revealing she has a daughter, which encourages Sarah. Vaines is lost in the cave and is about to be killed by a crawler when he is rescued by Juno, who is revealed to be alive, seemingly mentally disturbed, and skilled at hunting crawlers.
Juno outraged that Sarah abandoned her, immediately engages in a fight with her when the four survivors rejoin. Following the brief scuffle, they all agree that working together is the only way to survive and escape. Juno leads them into the feeding pit, which she claims has a passage to the surface that the crawlers use to gather food from above the ground. Sarah is handcuffed to Vaines so she can’t abandon them like she did Juno.
As they progress, Vaines falls over a ledge, almost taking Sarah with him, however, she begs Juno to help her. Juno ends up ordering Elen to cut off Vaines’ hand to save Sarah from falling as well.
Elen, Sarah, and Juno make it to the exit at the end of the movie, but they are halted by a swarm of crawlers. As they try to tip-toe past the crawlers, Juno is grabbed by a dying Greg, causing her to scream in surprise, attracting the attention of four crawlers. Greg dies soon after, leaving the women to combat the crawlers alone. Elen, Sarah, and Juno each kill a crawler in the combat.
After that, Sarah notices Juno is losing the battle to a much larger crawler than the others and tries to strangle it from behind. The crawler tenses up and cuts into Juno’s stomach and she dies in Sarah’s arms.
As Sarah mourns Juno’s death, Elen turns around to go, but they are surrounded by a large swarm of crawlers. Sarah cries in self-sacrifice, catching the attention of every crawler and allowing Elen to leave. Elen breaks through the cave’s exit, just like Sarah did when she first escaped, and is ready to ring for help on her mobile phone when she is assaulted by Ed, who smacks her in the face with a shovel and drags her back to the entrance as crawler food, a twist we did not see coming. As Elen regains consciousness after the hit, a bloodied crawler leaps from the cave entrance and presumably drags her back inside.
What’s fascinating is that the film’s production designer, Simon Bowles, essentially drew out a map of how all 30 caverns would link and how the players would walk through them based on the story. Some of the action set pieces were exciting in their savagery, with the film’s tongue-in-cheek tone being without a doubt, the only way to go, as trying to replicate the tone of the original Descent would be impossible given the premise, discoveries, and creatures already presented.
Cave-Dwelling Humanoids
According to Neil Marshall, the crawlers are cavemen who have remained underground. They’ve spent thousands of years adjusting to this habitat, according to the director. They’ve honed their cave adaptations to perfection. They’ve lost their eyesight, but they have excellent hearing and smell, and they can function in complete darkness.
They’re also excellent climbers who can scale any cliff face. All of these abilities are showcased in the films as they expertly stalk and then attack their prey one by one, making them terrifying predators. They are freakishly humanoid.
The Crawlers were originally only supposed to be male, but the creators decided to include female and newborn Crawlers to show that the colony was still alive, since having just male Crawlers would have made no sense as to how the colony would have endured.
The crawlers were made by Paul Hyett, a makeup and prosthetics artist. According to production designer Simon Bowles, the crawler design began as wide-eyed and more creature-like but then developed to give it a more human look. Crawlers had pristine white skin at first, but the appearance was changed to make them appear dirtier. The skin was originally phosphorescent, but the effect was too brilliant and reflective on the gloomy scene, so it was adjusted to blend into the shadows.
The crawler design was kept secret from the actors until they were presented in the sequences where the characters met the creatures to induce true tension while filming.
Because they were highly territorial, especially when faced with intruders in their caverns, the species is hostile. In fact, one Reddit member speculates that the crawlers were acting only in self-defense! According to the theory, the Crawlers’ viciousness stems from territoriality rather than carnivorous hunger.
Even when they devour humans, they do so in a haphazard manner, swallowing the guts without pausing to gnaw bones for marrow or even removing muscle tissue from the limbs. And, while the number of bones in the Crawlers’ den is significant, it represents a pathetic record for 10,000 years of continuous predation.
The Crawlers, like other underground creatures, are likely to be torpid, stupid, and atrophied. While they have bursts of activity, they will most likely sleep for most of their life.
Despite the fact that humans have gained access to their inner sanctum, just a few of the hundreds of Crawlers care to peek out. The protagonists also routinely defeat these unstoppable death machines.
Because human meat was clearly not their major source of nutrition when they had plainly gotten acclimated to the human-free cave system, it’s plausible that the Crawlers interpreted the startled screams for danger and responded in self-defense. So maybe itis time we cut these creatures some slack?
Did Sarah kill the other five and hallucinate the crawlers?
We’ve looked at the terrifying beasts that lurk in the depths of the caverns and act as the film’s principal antagonists. But what if these monsters are nothing more than a fabrication of our imagination? Well, the internet is always churning out theories that seem rather weird but upon closer inspection, actually makes sense and here is one of them.
The possibility for hallucinations is planted early in the film when Rebecca cites claustrophobia, hallucinations, dehydration, panic attacks, anxiety, disorientation, visual and auditory deterioration that may occur when spelunking. Audiences are aware that Sarah has hallucinations while in the cave. These hallucinations vary in intensity depending on which ending one chooses to watch; either a full escape montage or the face of her deceased buddy.
As a matter of fact, Marshall stated on the cast commentary for the film that the original edit includes a scene of a crawler emerging in one of Sarah’s nightmares. This suggests that the crawlers were supposed to be unclear, because this scenario would confirm that they were within her mind long before she entered the cave.
Sarah is the first one to see the crawler, which may mean one of two things. She may have just made them up to justify the deaths of her comrades. Another theory is that crawlers do exist in the cave, but they are not the vicious animals depicted onscreen. It’s possible that the first crawler was a source of inspiration. Sarah notices something ominous and projects herself onto it.
Another idea looks at Sarah’s mental health, since she is taken off her medicine unexpectedly because she meant the descend to be a day trip. Her alienation from reality might be reflected in the crawlers. Sarah is seen killing two of her companions throughout The Descent, indicating that she is capable of violence in both kindness and retribution. In the midst of a swarm of crawlers, she sentences Juno to death. If the crawlers are Sarah’s projections, the swarm could have been her own enraged mind seeking vengeance for Juno’s adultery with Sarah’s husband.
Sarah’s five friends and the five crawlers she kills, according to one theory. Sarah’s mental condition is linked to the number five, as evidenced by her hallucination of her daughter carrying a cake with five candles. The candles in her final hallucination number six could represent the end of Sarah as she knew herself. Her companions are literally dead, but she has been figuratively wrecked by her descent into lunacy.
Is There Going To Be The Descent Part 3?
With outstanding performances and savage gore, ‘The Descent’ is recognised as one of the best horror films of the 2000s. In ‘The Descent Part 2,’ Sarah gave herself to the crawlers so that Deputy Rios may live. Rios escapes the cave, only for Ed, the old man who led the cops to the mine shaft elevator, to use a shovel to knock her out. Rios wakes up just in time to see a crawler leap at her. The crawler pulls her back to the cave hole and tosses her in.
Will there ever be a third installment of ‘Descent’? Will ‘The Descent Part 3’ ever be made? The second film ended on a dramatic cliffhanger, but will ‘The Descent Part 3’ ever be made?
While the sequel’s ending raised some fascinating questions for ‘The Descent Part 3,’ such as why is Ed helping feed the crawlers,’ the picture barely broke even. It did well on DVD, but fans of the original film were underwhelmed by the sequel. In fact, the film’s executive producer, Neil Marshall, later said that he wishes the sequel hadn’t been made because the tale was wound up by the end of ‘The Descent’.
In recent years, Neil Marshall has moved on to shows like ‘Game Of Thrones’ and comic book films like ‘Hellboy.’ It’s also improbable that he’d want to produce a second sequel, given how he felt about the first. Given the passage of time and the widespread lack of interest for another sequel, it’s safe to predict that ‘The Descent Part 3’ will not be released.