History Film / TheDescent

''The Descent'' is a 2005 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall, director of ''Film/DogSoldiers'' and ''Film/{{Doomsday}}''. The film follows a group of six women who embark on a caving expedition and become trapped underground after a cave-in. Things go from bad to worse when they discover that the cave is home to predatory, [[TheMorlocks pale humanoid creatures]] (known as "Crawlers"). As the Crawlers hunt them down, the women embark on a struggle to survive and escape the cave - but that's not their only problem, as the friends' trust in each other slowly begins to deteriorate in the tense, claustrophobic environment. A sequel, ''Film/TheDescentPart2'', was released in December 2009.

* {{Morlocks}}: The crawlers. Morlock creator H.G. Wells is one of Neil Marshall's favorite writers.

* VasquezAlwaysDies: [[spoiler:Holly. Though as everybody dies, it's more like Vasquez dies first.]]

* FreudWasRight: As is jokingly (or perhaps not) stated in the director and cast commentary on the DVD, several people have believed that this movie is all about sex, what with the little white men chasing sweaty women down dripping wet tunnels...
** Invoked by Neil Marshall on the DVD "Beneath the Scenes", where multiple jokes are made about how similar a piece of the cave is to a certain part of the female anatomy. To wit - "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!"

* CaliforniaDoubling: Set in America (aside from the beginning of the movie), filmed in England and Scotland.

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler:Sam gets her throat slashed by a Crawler]]. Just before she dies, however, she gets a sudden burst of adrenaline and stabs the Crawler, causing it to plummet into the crevasse below. [[spoiler:As it turns out, there was water below and the Crawler doesn't actually die at that point (Juno finishes the job), but it still counts as a seriously {{Badass}} moment for Sam]].

* {{Badass}}: Almost everyone has their moments, but Juno and [[spoiler:Sarah]] especially apply for this trope.

* TheBechdelTest: With a cast of almost only women, there is almost no mention of men or their love lives except for an offhand reference by Sam of her boyfriend, and [[spoiler: Sarah finding out Juno was having an affair with her late-husband.]]

* BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:Juno gets one, wounded and outnumbered, but we are given her final screams to confirm her fate. In the UK ending, Sarah awakens still trapped in the caves, making her chances of survival seem unlikely.]]

* BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:Juno gets one, wounded and outnumbered, but we are given her final screams to confirm her fate. In the UK ending, Sarah awakens still trapped in the caves, making her chances of survival ambiguous but unlikely.]]

* BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:Juno gets one, wounded and outnumbered, but we are her final screams to confirm her fate. In the UK ending, Sarah awakens still trapped in the caves, making her chances of survival ambiguous but unlikely.]]

* AbandonedHospitalAwakening: Subverted, when Sarah ''seems'' to wake up in an AbandonedHospital after the car accident. After about twenty seconds, it turns out to be a hallucination, she's in a normal hospital.

* BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:Juno gets one, wounded and outnumbered, but we are only given her final screams to confirm her fate. In the UK ending, Sarah awakens still trapped in the caves, making her chances of survival ambiguous but unlikely.]]

* HopeSpot: [[spoiler:Holly sees a light source and runs to it, believing it to be an exit... only to slip down a hole and break her leg.]]

* NeckSnap: Juno does this to a Crawler.
* NightmareSequence: Sarah has a lot of them.
* NotQuiteDead: [[spoiler:Beth.]]

** For some of the jump scares, it's fairly easy to tell that something bad is going happen soon. We don't know what, where or exactly when, so being somewhat forewarned only makes it that much more frightening.
** For the first 2/3 of the film, pretty much ''nothing does happen'', instead relying on the atmosphere of the cave itself to create the sense of dread. For this reason, many find this actually ''scarier'' than the Crawlers.

* RedemptionEqualsDeath

* [[BigBrotherInstinct Big Sister Instinct]]: Becca is very caring and protective towards her sweet little sister Sam, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the less-experienced caving group. Also, it's fairly subtle, but Beth displays [[BigBrotherInstinct Big Sister Instincts]] towards anyone in the group who needs it - she's constantly looking after the emotionally fragile (due to the death of her husband and child) Sarah, she gives her jacket to Holly after she breaks her leg and helps her stand and walk (along with [[TheMedic Sam]]) and she goes back to help Juno in the crawler fight.

* ICannotSelfTerminate: [[spoiler:Beth, after being accidentally stabbed through the throat by Juno, begs Sarah to kill her, lest she die slowly and painfully or be ripped apart by the Crawlers.]]

* XMeetsY: ''[[Literature/TheDescent Jeff Long's The Descent]]'' Meets ''[[Creator/HPLovecraft Lurking Fear]]''

'''''The Descent''''' is a 2005 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall, director of ''Film/DogSoldiers'' and ''Film/{{Doomsday}}''. The film follows a group of six women who embark on a caving expedition and become trapped underground after a cave-in. Things go from bad to worse when they discover that the cave is home to predatory, [[TheMorlocks pale humanoid creatures]] (known as "Crawlers"). As the Crawlers hunt them down, the women embark on a struggle to survive and escape the cave - but that's not their only problem, as the friends' trust in each other slowly begins to deteriorate in the tense, claustrophobic environment. A sequel, ''The Descent Part 2'', was released in December 2009.

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!!The sequel provides examples of:

* ActionSurvivor: When Sarah sees Dan and Rios being stalked unawares by a Crawler, she doesn't attack the Crawler or try to shout out a warning. Rather, she [[spoiler:tackles Rios and keeps her from making a sound while the Crawler attacks and kills Dan, then stealthily grabs Greg's supplies off of his body while the Crawler drags his corpse away.]]
* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler: Sheriff Vaines]]
* BadassGrandpa: Sheriff Vaines gets a jump scare with a Crawler leaping out screaming. His reaction? Punch it in the face and knock it down.
* CallBack: [[spoiler:Rios']] escape is nearly a shot-for-shot remake of the first movie's ending.
* ChainedHeat: Vaines chains himself to Sarah partway through the movie to keep her from running away.
* CoversAlwaysLie: Not so much the cover, but the blurb, which promises "a new tribe of crawlers, inbred, deformed and even more viciously feral". Nope, same old Crawlers as the first movie.
* CruelTwistEnding: See ShockingSwerve.
* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: KillEmAll, much like the original.]]
* FinalGirl: Elen
* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler: Sarah, she starts screaming to protect Elen from crawlers and gets eaten by them]]
* HollywoodDarkness: The sequel forgoes pitch-blackness for silhouette shots in most cases
* NeverFoundTheBody: Exploited to [[strike:not]] explain [[spoiler:Juno's]] survival after the events of the first movie.
* NotQuiteDead: Much like Beth in the first movie, [[spoiler:Greg]] proves to be not quite dead when he grabs [[spoiler:Juno]] on their way out.
* RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler:Sarah and Juno]] have learned from each other that the easiest way to survive is to make sure that the others die. By the end of the film, they've both executed self-sacrifices to allow others to live.
* RevisedEnding: Based on the [[DVDCommentary Director's Commentary]] and an [[http://hubpages.com/hub/THE-DESCENT-2-coverage early script review]], the ending may have originally lacked its current ShockingSwerve. If so, it was definitely a failed AuthorsSavingThrow.
* SenselessSacrifice: [[spoiler:Greg]] tackles one of the Crawlers into a chasm to give [[spoiler:Cath]] a chance to get to the other side whereupon she's killed by a Crawler on the other side. Admittedly, he was probably dying at the time due to having had the side of his neck torn out.
* ThisIsADrill: Greg uses a power drill in his kit to kill one of the crawlers by drilling into its head.
* TookALevelInBadass: Once she recovers her memory, Sarah regains all of her levels in Badass. [[spoiler:Juno]] isn't far behind.
* VasquezAlwaysDies: [[spoiler:Juno and Sarah.]]
* WildChild: [[spoiler:Juno]] initially seems to have reverted to this in her survival. She gets better.

** [[spoiler:Juno, she lied and took her friends to an unknown cave system, as opposed as a cave system for tourists.]]

Has nothing to do with the video game series ''{{Descent}}''. Nor the novel ''Literature/TheDescent'' by Jeff Long, although there are certainly similarities.

* AHouseDivided: The whole group is somewhat mad at Juno for lying to them and bringing them down to an unexplored cave that was much more dangerous than they were expecting. However, it's water under the bridge once they meet the crawlers. That is, until Sarah [[spoiler:finds out what Juno did to Beth, and she doesn't know it was an accident, plus a recent discovery of Juno's extracurricular activities with her husband, and she's also feeling a bit AxCrazy... The result is not pretty.]]

[[caption-width-right:300:If you look at the Light in the top left corner the right way, you can see a Crawler's Face.]]