IHdb

ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - July 6th

"THE DESCENT" released in 2005

With the success of his debut film, the werewolf action/horror chiller Dog Soldiers (2002), British director Neil Marshall followed up with his second horror film, The Descent. It follows six lifelong friends as they explore a previously undiscovered cave system and start to be hunted by a subterranean species of flesh-eating humanoids!

Watch The Descent trailer below!

Thrill-seekers Beth (Alex Reid), Sam (MyAnna Buring), and Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) are invited to join their friend Juno (Natalie Mendoza) and newcomer Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) for a weekend in the Appalachian Mountains to go spelunking. Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), still greiving from the death of her husband and daughter one year before, also decides to join them. As the group moves further into the caves, the passage behind them collapses, trapping them. After a heated discussion, Juno admits they are in an unmapped system and does not know the way out, making any rescue impossible. Pressing forward, they discover the abandoned equipment from a previous climbing group and a crude cave painting depicting strange creatures. Later, the group come across a den filled with animal bones and are attacked by the Crawlers - pale, humanoid creatures that live entirely underground. Armed with only their climbing pick-axes, the women must now fight for their lives against a this new breed of alpha predators!

Top:   Shauna MacDonald as Sarah;

Above:   The cast (clockwise), Natalie Mendoza, Shauna Macdonald, 

Alex Reid, Nora-Jane Noone, Saskia Mulder, and MyAnna Buring

Sam: Where are we?
Juno: It hasn't got a name. It's a new system. I wanted us all to discover it! No one's ever been down here before.

Originally planned to include a mixed cast, Marshall decided to cast solely women in the roles and to avoid making them clichéd, sought the advice of his female friends. The other cast members included Molly Kayll as Sarah's daughter Jessica, and the only male actors Oliver Milburn as Sarah's husband Paul, with Craig Conway as one of the film's crawlers, Scar. The cast members were taken to a rock-climbing center in Derbyshire to help prepare them for filming. Although set in the United States, The Descent was filmed entirely in the United Kingdom with exterior scenes shot in Scotland and interior scenes filmed on sets built at Pinewood Studios near London. The cave was built at Pinewood because filmmakers considered it too dangerous and time-consuming to shoot in an actual cave. Production of the film was fast tracked in order to beat the release of another similar themed movie, The Cave (2005).

Above:   Natalie Mendoza as Juno;

Holly: Hey, there's something down here...

The Crawlers were designed by creature creator Paul Hyatt to resemble Nosferatu from the film of the same name. They also had huge white eyes to begin with but this idea was done away with because they looked too silly. Redesigned to include a grubby pseudo-phosphorescent skin, Marshall explained the Crawlers origins as primitive cavemen who evolved over thousands of years into a "very feral, very primal species living underground." The appearance of the creatures was kept secret from the cast members until the first scene in which they encounter them was filmed. When the cast were finally filming the scene where the girls encounter the Crawlers, the girls were genuinely scared and screamed the building down, with Natalie Mendoza later admitting, "When the moment came, I nearly wet my pants! I was running around afterwards, laughing in this hysterical way and trying to hide the fact that I was pretty freaked out!"

Top:   The group stumbles into the den of the Crawlers!;

Above:   Juno won't go down without a fight

[Terrified, looking at Sarah who's covered in blood]
Juno: What happened to you?

Premiering at the Scottish horror film festival Dead by Dawn, The Descent received universal critical acclaim. Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars, writing, "This is the fresh, exciting summer movie I've been wanting for months. Or for years, it seems." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times described The Descent as "one of the better horror entertainments of the last few years", calling it "indisputably and pleasurably nerve-jangling" and Bloody Disgusting ranked the film third in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade'; their article saying "One of the scariest films of this or any decade... Ultimately, The Descent is the purest kind of horror film – ruthless, unforgiving, showing no mercy."

Top:   Director Neil Marshall (bottom left) and crew on the cave set at 

Pinewood Studios;   Above:   Marshall works with one of the cast

With the success, producers quickly green-lit a sequel, but without the participation of director Neil Marshall. The Descent Part 2 featured the return of Shauna MacDonald and Natalie Mendoza's characters Sarah and Juno (Juno having survived being left to the Crawlers in the first film) as a new group go searching for the bodies of the original climbing party and encounter a new generation of deadly Crawlers!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   85%