The Descent

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS **SPOILERS**

I love creature features, because I love creatures. But at least nine times out of ten, they're very poorly scripted and the special effects are even worse. SyFy Channel and The Asylum have made the problem five times worse by taking that z-grade shlock and mass-producing it on some kind of monthly basis.

The Descent is widely considered one of the best creature feature films. In fact, outside of Jaws, it may well be the most critically-acclaimed creature film in the horror genre. The film's director, Neil Marshall, went on to direct one of Game of Thrones' biggest episodes.

Genre Perfection

I first watched The Descent a few years ago on recommendation. But horror films can rely as much on your incidental mood as they can on anything else, in order for them to be effective. I enjoyed The Descent and I could tell it was a well made film, but it was also like the fifth film I had watched that night and I just wasn't really in the mood for the kind of film it turned out to be. I knew someday I'd have to go back and give it a proper view. Then, for whatever reason, a couple weeks ago I was struck with the insatiable urge to watch The Descent. And I'm happy to say, it was every bit as good as I had been expecting. I'm now pleased to rank it among the best of horror, especially for being so good in a subgenre that sadly is so poor.

It's a clever and well-built film throughout. A movie where the monsters are the only obstacle can sometimes be too simplistic or bland. A lot of monster movies remedy this by putting in some asinine human angle, where bad humans are leading the rest of the group to the slaughter. Rather than following that cliche', The Descent fills the gaps by depicting the myriad treacheries of spelunking. The monsters don't even show up for probably 45 minutes, maybe even an hour, and it works out perfectly. It's claustrophobic, nerve-wracking, and a little bit beautiful to endure these daring cave adventures, especially knowing that they've entered an unknown, uncharted cave. These kinds of innate, physical horrors are vastly underused in a horror genre overripe with far too many knife-wielding maniacs and two-bit hauntings. That makes The Descent not only a godsend to the creature feature category, but also an indispensable classic for man vs. nature horror as well.

Horror Magic

My favorite thing about the horror genre isn't the fear, it's the wonder. Within the context of this dark mayhem you often find kernels of true awe and amazement: moments where that which is imaginary feels truly real. I don't know what it is about horror that makes this so much more effective to me than it is in feel-good fantasy films like, say, The Waterhorse. Maybe it's the scarcity and rarity of it, or an inherent cynicism that tells me fantasy elements which try to kill you are more realistic than fantasy elements which want to hug you. Or maybe I just find horror films more immersive, and in my immersed state I'm more open to being moved by fantasy elements. But whatever the reason why, dark films like The Blair Witch Project, Pan's Labyrinth, and Trick 'r Treat illicit in me that same sense of soaring spectacle that is more unanimously experienced in films like Jurassic Park and E.T.

The Descent also boasts one of the best scenes of this "horror-magic." The group's way back has been blocked, and they're travelling deeper into the Earth with limited resources on the slim hope that they might find a way back above ground. They don't know if they will even live to survive the day. But travelling down through this uncharted, undiscovered cave, they find prehistoric cave paintings. There's this brief, spare moment of utter transcendence where it dawns upon them they're the first people to see these paintings in at least a hundred years (since the last set of doomed explorers), possibly tens of thousands. They want to stop and stare, but can't waste the battery power on their equipment. This scene is as magic as anything from Spielberg.

Regarding the Ending

The version I watched featured the U.S. theatrical ending, where our protagonist escapes the cave and drives off into the sunset. On Youtube I watched the "Unrated" ending, which is really just the U.K. theatrical ending. The U.K. ending is this really gorgeous scene, where Sarah's escape was merely a hallucination. Still in the cave and facing imminent death, she hallucinates the familiar vision of her daughter and her birthday cake, and she gets this completely amazing, twisted smile on her face.

I'm torn on which ending I prefer, because I really love them both. The U.K. ending is grim and beautiful and dark. But I honestly think the U.S. ending hit me harder, believe it or not. Killing off the final character at the end of a horror film is such a common finale. It's terribly depressing in the sense that they go through all this suffering in the hopes that they will survive, and then the audience's hope is dashed. But on the other hand, killing them at the end is a sort of catharsis where -- in a certain sense, all the horrors the audience has endured, are released into the ether. You kill the character, the ordeal is over. Watching Sarah submit to death in the U.K. ending left me less disturbed than seeing her survive in the U.S. version because I imagined her having to survive with all that brutal baggage. It was like her suffering had only just begun. But both endings are great and impactful in their unique way.

Is This Real Life?

I had read on the internet that some people believe the monsters in the film are imaginary, so that was the thought constantly dominating my mind during this viewing. I was dilligently on the look out for clues to corroborate or contradict that theory.

For a while, it looks pretty plausible that the crawlers could have been imaginary. We have it clearly stated before entering the cave that auditory and visual hallucinations can be side-effects of hardcore spelunking. We find the mutilated deer which plants the image in the people's minds that there could be some kind of monster predator in the area. Finally, we have the cave paintings which incite thoughts of primitive, potentially monstrous humanoids. Then we have the fact that Sarah doesn't eat lunch with the rest of the group. Hunger and dehydration can greatly contribute to these types of hallucinations.

So it seemed like a pretty good base for som imaginary monsters. In the dark, dripping water can sound like a creature, rocks on the ground can feel like bones. Sarah is the first one who sees them. Paranoia and mass-hysteria can ensue when someone says they see something. That's perfectly natural. Point your flashlight at the wall and say "there it is, the monster!" It's no surprise that the rest of the group thinks they see it, too. That's how their first encounter with the crawlers goes.

Problem is, that first encounter is the only one you can explain away with hallucinations. After that, every member of the group gets extremely physical with these creatures. There are not just a few but countless scenes of physical brawls with these monsters that can't be equated to paranoid delusions. If the battles were even a little bit toned down, I could start to buy the hallucination angle. But they're so very physical. By the end we have Juno and Sarah fighting them virtually in unison. It just strikes me as unlikely.

In order to go along with the theory that Sarah is imagining things and she kills everyone, you have to throw out the entire film. You have to accept that nothing we see in the film is even remotely what happened -- Sarah kills everyone and *after* the fact, her damaged mind composes this broad fantasy to protect her from the truth. That's a perfectly valid interpretation if you choose to use it, but I prefer to believe that what the audience sees can at least connect to what really happened.

I further find the theory of Sarah killing everyone to be highly unworkable because the one person who Sarah actually has reason to kill -- the one person who actually DID let one of the group die, and the person who slept with Sarah's husband -- Sarah doesn't kill Juno, she merely maims her and leaves her to the crawlers. You expect me to believe Sarah was ruthless on everyone else but took mercy on the only person she had motive to hate? Doesn't make sense. Besides, if there are no crawlers, Juno could still crawl her way out of the cave (hypothetically).

Ultimately, here's my take. The idea of the crawlers being imaginary is something that Neil Marshall himself has mentioned as a possibility they were working with. But ultimately it's not the angle they went with. You could tweak the film and make a really awesome movie where the crawlers are imaginary. But the way the film is in its original state: no, I don't think they were hallucinations.