A surreal allegory and infernal hell trip at the same time

Rating: 7/10 (16 May 2020)

"The Descent" is a 2005 horror film directed by Neil Marshall starring Shauna Macdonald and Natalie Mendoza. I generally love it when films manage to become successful, even though their budget is heavily restricted. Money isn't always everything, sometimes I watch movies that have obtained a utopian funding and ended up as nothing but hot garbage (I am looking at you, Michael Bay), on the other side I am extremely fascinated that some gems prove the total opposite and show that pure creativity is everything a film needs. May it be Kevin Smith's minimalistic comedy hit "Clerks" that works simply due to its brilliant screenplay or a found footage film like "The Blair Witch Project" that solely lives from the horror it creates in our heads, low budget doesn't always mean lower quality. While this horror flick has had a little more money in it pocket than the previously mentioned flicks (approximately Â£3.5 million, to be exact), it is still a meagre amount to work with. Hence it is so surprisingly pleasant to see what a decent film the outcome in case of this flick is. First, it is fascinating to see that it is not only a horror film that's sole purpose is to show of some jump scares and frighten the audience, but also offers a subliminal deeper meaning that gives the film a haunting ambiguity to it. Honestly, I haven't seen this film before, but already a few minutes into the movie I told my brother about my theory and he just sat there and said "Yes...", wondering that I figured it out so fast, but the fact that my brain once again overanalysed the film didn't make it any less packing, if anything, it made it even better for me. The film starts out with a traumatic experience and it was obvious that it wasn't only filmed to make the film longer, it has a deep meaning that will overshadow the remaining progress of the film immensely. Protagonist Sarah is the one who lost both her husband and daughter in a fatal car accident and suffers from depression ever since. While it is not explicitly mentioned by any character, it is still sort of evident, as she is seen taking pills and also the fact that the first half of the film is almost exclusively captured in cold blue shades support this assumption. This is without a doubt one of the most brilliant aspects of this movie, but before we go deeper into it (pun intended), there are also a few things that I was dissatisfied with. On the one hand, it was extremely trying for me to find some sort of connection to any of the characters, as the film doesn't do enough about introducing them properly, on the other hand the character constellation was tremendously confusing, especially in the cave scenes, that I had severe difficulties to distinguish between them all. The lack of sympathy for the ladies even got to the point that I was more annoyed rather than actually caring for them. The fact that they are characterized as what Lily and Robin would call "Woo-Girls" made them unlikable, to the point that I sat there and jokingly begged for someone to kill them. It indeed was pretty hard to not dislike them all and that's such a pity, as the only halfway likable character of them all was our troubled protagonist Sarah. Sadly, the focus doesn't lie on her the way I hoped it would and she is pushed in the background most of the time in favour of concentrating on her unsympathetic friends instead. This procedure was continued for most of the runtime, I even forgot her name in a few situations. For a main character that is pretty sad. Only when there were two or three of them left, it was easy to follow them, in other words, it was way too late. Even when I disliked this undeniable major flaw, it did not keep me from having a good time, as the horror in this film is simply superb. The way it is only introduced slowly makes it work out so well and stand out in its own way. To be honest, if I haven't already known about the fact that this film belongs to the horror genre, it easily could have been a survival drama as well, but thanks to advertising and the fact that is a fifteen years old classic of that same genre, I was spared from this unexpected genre twist. This doesn't change the fact that the film indeed managed to scare the hell out of me. As previously mentioned, the fear is only induced gradually. Most of the horror in the beginning takes place via sounds and brief shots of what turns out to be the horrid danger and only introduces its monster after it has been messing with our heads for a while. The so-called "Crawlers", as they are named only in the credits, are genuinely creepy and the mere fact that they are humanoid creatures and that their origin isn't explained in the slightest, adds a lot of thrill to the atmosphere. Also, that those monsters are anything but invincible and have a distinct weakness to them (blindness) makes the film tremendously unpredictable. Thus, it is still offering the possibility for the characters to escape and find a way out, instead of making it appear that it is their certain death for them in the first place. Furthermore, it offers enough other aspects and ideas that kept me on the edge of my seat. Next to the closeup shots of the leading ladies crawling through the most narrow fissures that triggered my own claustrophobia even when I wasn't in the situation myself, the different colour schemes that gave each scenario an undeniably packing feeling to it make it even better. Oh, and let's not forget to mention the graphic violence and blood. The scene where they try to fix Holly's open fracture? Almost made me throw up! There are also several other sequences that use the gore factor of this film eminently well, but the best scenes are the ones when the film makes use of the main feature of its antagonistic creatures. When this one crawler literally steps on the head of the motionless Sarah after she killed off the female one in the pool of blood? I literally freaked out! As gruesome and promising the killings started out, after more than two deaths took place in quite the same manner, it became less shocking than before and the deaths of those two who were killed before Juno and Sarah become the only ones left alive (I actually don't remember their names at all) were repetitive, lacked the innovation of the demises depicted before and on top of that, were utterly stupid. I mean, what did she try to achieve by climbing? She even checked it out other ways and knew that there was water at the bottom of the gorge. Why didn't she try it? It was probably necessary so that Sarah could confront Juno about the apparent affair of her with her late husband. After she has killed her former best friend, we get to the most interesting part of the film: the ending. Ignoring the existence of the sequel that presumes that she actually made it out of the cave, I personally think that she died down there eventually. If we consider that the things that are depicted in this film actually happened, she died down there in the cave by the hands of those supernatural monsters, but I prefer to see the whole thing metaphorically: As I mentioned before, the film is just a brutal allegory of Sarah's fight with depression. The whole spelunking adventure with her friends resembles her deteriorating mental health and her friends trying to help her through it and the crawlers are the incarnation of depressive thoughts that try to kill her and distance her from her friends. I mean, they are killed off one by one, the arrows on the wall all contradict themselves and Sarah is the final character to be alive and only after she learned that her husband cheated on her with her best friend she totally accepts that she is going to die. With seemingly no one there to help her anymore, she embraces her fate and is letting it happen. Even though it is not explicitly shown or mentioned, my theory is that she commits suicide in the end after giving up the fight. Regardless of whether you see it as just a gore horror film or an allegory for her struggle, in the end the film draws a devastatingly depressing conclusion in both ways. In terms of filmmaking it is absolutely brilliant, but as a subject matter it indescribably sad. All in all, this subterranean and surreal film is an ambiguous hell trip through all sorts of emotions and the ferocity of depression and offers enough as both a pure gore fest and as an allegory to keep the viewer on the edge of their seats. Even though the characters are shallow and unlikeable, and the film lacks the factor of shock in the end, it still manages to entertain and create a nightmarish atmosphere. It indeed is a gem, flawed but not less brilliant, and deservedly bears the title of being one of the finest and most original British horror films of all time. I don't know about you, but I will never go anywhere near to a cave, let alone entering one. It is enough for me to watch a bunch of girls do this for me on screen. This already gives me enough anxiety.