The Descent
Women in horror (or filmmaking general) have had it bad for a very very long time. There is no denying that we were just paper dolls made out of the cliché handbook on how to do horror. If we weren’t virginal and heroic, we had sex then died. If we were the villain, we were scorned by the hands of a man or bullied for daring to eat one cake more than we should. Women in horror screamed, fucked then died.
Only lately has the insurgence of women led movies been pivotal to reshaping the genre for the better. These aren’t just waifs squandered under the knife of something sinister either. They are intelligent women with fully fleshed and formed characters who happen to stumble upon murder and spectres. The basis’ of the film becomes their passionate need for survival as well as protecting loved ones The likes of You’re Next lead by the rollicking Sharni Vision, The Babadook with Essie Davis and It Follows’ excellent Maika Monroe have proven that women can charge the genre without succumbing to that stereotypical check box that we’ve all become accustomed too.
But a movie about a group of women, surviving with no male in sight? That couldn’t work, could it?
Well, yes. It’s called The Descent
The Descent is a 2005 horror movie made by Neil Marshall. A year after the horrific death of her husband and daughter, Sarah is hoping to move on from the tragedy by going to a spelunking trip with her best friends. The group who adore with extreme sports all decide that this would be a great way to take Sarah’s mind from the anniversary and head to the Appalachian Mountins of North Carolina. However, Sarah’s best friend Juno, determined to make the holiday as exciting as possible, foolishly takes them to an unexplored cave and squanders the group’s safety. Which is just the tip of the iceberg when they discover that the reason the caves remain secret is because people go in but don’t come out as the women fall foul of flesh-eating troglofaunal humanoids.
Marshall’s film is a triumphant work that cuts out all sunlight of the pulse racing film. As they enter the turbulent world of the caves, the darkness envelops the viewer in this shocking twisting plunge through the cave system. The atmospheric horror isn’t just an absence of freely moving oxygen to our gaggle of girls, but it instant strips the viewer away from hope, safety and undeniable terror. The director clearly plays with the spectrum of underground colours and then slowly strips them away until our eyes are plunged into petrifying and fearsome panic, looming over us with each twist and turn.
This is also a collection of stunning acting played deftly well by our hollering ladies smack bang in the centre of trouble. As Sarah, Filth’s Shauna Macdonald (she played Carol, I’ll stop now) gives the accurate amount of passion to a distressed woman still plighted by the pain of her past. Yet here, she does not wallow in it, pushing her instinctual strength and intellect to help find her sense of survival is crucial to the group’s life expediency. Macdonald is able to convey a rich fuller woman that has the spine-tingling terrified elements with her as well as the power and will to strive on. Alongside her, the cast do prove their worth as one by one they are slaughter - accidentally, through each other or by the creatures, they come together to find like in this dark and dank situation.
In certain aspects, I’d possibly like it a lot better if we didn’t see the monsters at all. There is nothing more exhilarating that ladies picked off in the pitch dark with only the sounds and smell of blood to haunt them. That being said, there is immediate claustrophobia that boils in the film and in the hearts of the characters - leading them to do stupid and suspicious things. The cabin fever in the middle of the cave is remarkably astute, established and offers a different level of intellectual horror.
So, dare you descend into The Descent?