As Halloween approaches we tend to look into our film collection for those Horror/Scary films to watch. This year we chose to revisit 2005 British Horror classic The Descent.
A film that probably had the same effect on going into caves as Jaws did for those going into the water.
From writer/director Neil Marshall, this would be his follow up to the excellent horror debut, Dog Soldiers, which is well worth a watch if you have never seen it.
The film opens with Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) and her friends, Juno (Natalie Mendoza); Beth (Alex Reid) white water rafting, watched by Sarah’s husband Paul (Oliver Milburn) with their daughter.
Whilst driving home, Paul is distracted and is involved in a car crash which kills both him and his daughter, with Sarah surviving.
A year later, Juno and Beth reunite with Sarah when they all rent a cabin with other friends; Sam (MyAnna Buring); Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) and Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) with the goal of going on a simple caving adventure, to try and bring the group back together through their love of extreme sports.
As the 6 friends head out to the cave, we establish that Juno has kept away from Sarah, for which she apologies for not being there for her.
Within the cave, whilst crawling through the first passage, it collapses and we learn that Juno, in an attempt to re-establish her friendship with Sarah has taken them to a unmapped cave system. This shocks and angers most of the group as they wanted a simple cave system to ease Sarah in and more importantly, should anything go wrong, no one will know where they are as they logged details for a different location.
With seemingly no way out the way they came, the 6 friends have no option to move forward and come across cave paintings which seemingly gives hope that there may be a way out.
Holly, thinking she sees sunlight runs ahead, only to fall down a hole and break her leg, making their plans to escape the caves even more challenging.
As Sarah goes ahead to see if there is a way out she spots a strange looking creature and we soon know that the 6 friends are not alone.
The creatures (called Crawlers) soon show that they are not friendly and are killers, as skulls and bones are found in the cave tunnels.
What follows is a race for our 6 friends to try and find a way out and as you would imagine, not all of them survive.
This really is a great horror film, if you have never seen it, we highly recommend you give it a go. The caves being dark adds to the atmosphere and with seemingly no way out you also get a feel of claustrophobia too, which again adds to the scares.
The film is also refreshing with its all-female lead cast, and no disrespect to them, with no big names, you never know who will survive, if any. The film was considered a box office hit and a sequel The Descent Part II followed, which again benefits from the location but does not really offer much more to this far superior original.
If looking for a new scary film to try at Halloween or indeed any time of the year, this film is worthy of your time, although you may not want to watch it in the dark =)
You can find the film fairly cheaply at Amazon here:
You can find the trailer here:
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