The episode of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? covering The Descent was Written by Emilie Black, Narrated by Adam Walton, Edited by Jaime Vasquez, Produced by Andrew Hatfield and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
The decade comprised of the years 2000 to 2009 seems to be maligned by many horror fans as a bad period, a period where nothing good was released. Much like the decades before it when folks maligned the 1990s, 1980s, and now more recent movies, there was some bad stuff put out of course, but there were also a whole of good movies too. Some of them, like The Strangers in 2008, The House of the Devil in 2009, and Brotherhood of the Wolf in 2001 were excellent even. People often seem to paint the past in a better light and vilify the more recent eras when it comes to horror films. In 2005, plenty of horror films were released. Some good like The Devil’s Rejects, some interesting like Hostel, and some terrible ideas like Cry Wolf. Somewhere in all of this, the director of the excellent 2002 film Dog Soldiers released his second feature film, The Descent (watch it HERE).
The film came 3 years after Dog Soldiers and it premiered on the festival circuit gathering positive reviews and word of mouth. The Descent had a lot of pressure on it following up an excellent first feature for director Neil Marshall. There was a lot riding on this one also being great and doing well financially. Of course, things were not simple to get to that financial success. The film was first presented to audiences at film festivals and then it eventually got its US release on August 6th, 2006. Before that release, hype was created by those who saw the film at festivals, by magazine articles in publications like Fangoria, and some television bits and features here and there. Mostly, what really seemed to build the hype were the early screenings done across the US. For most people attending these, they had very little information to go on, barely a trailer in most cases, and their opinions were part of the early days of social media, so the whole influencers and social media hype train was not exactly what it is now. It was much more based on individuals posting and letting everyone they know about this film with all these young ladies going in a cave as a group outing to make one of them feel better only to find fear and death awaiting them.
What is the full story here though? Well, it’s basically that, a group of ladies go on an adventure to cheer up one of their own. Of course, there is more to it, so here come the spoilers. The ladies take their friend out for an adventure where they go repelling and exploring in a cave where they end up getting a little lost without many supplies or food. As they try to find a way out, they soon feel like they aren’t alone. This feeling turns out to be true when the crawlers come out and thus begins the ladies’ fight for their lives.
The film is entirely Neil Marshall’s as he wrote and directed it. The production used a grand total budget of $4.45 million. These days, as it was back in 2005, this is not a huge budget. It’s not even considered a medium budget. This is a small budget, mostly independent film. It’s a small horror film with heavy special effects, shot almost entirely on sound stages, with expensive decors to create the caves, and a fantastic cast for both the ladies who get stuck in the caves and the crawlers who live in there. In terms of budget for a horror film with creatures and so much going on, this budget is tiny. What was the return on this relatively small-ish budget? The film’s US box office total was $26,005,908 USD and the international total was $57,051,053. Even with marketing, publicity, and distribution costs taken into account, that is a successful film, no way around it.
Let’s look at the box office charts and numbers here. On August 4th, 2006, many films, including a couple bigger titles, were vying for the top spot of the box office. The Descent had one the smallest budget of the bunch. In the top ten that weekend, 4 movies were in their first week of release: The Descent, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, and The Night Listener. The Night Listener had an even smaller budget at just $3 million USD. So, what does the top 10 look like, in order from 10 to 1: The Night Listener, The Ant Bully, You, Me And Dupree, Monster House, John Tucker Must Die, Miami Vice, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, The Descent, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby at number one. Coming at number three in a week with a box office stacked with hits is not a bad feat. Doing so on their smaller budget and with mostly word of mouth as publicity from festivals and early screenings is almost a miracle.
Adding to these numbers at the box office, US and International total, the film also has had a good run in DVD sales with an estimated domestic total of $23,395,071. That has now been added onto, but the numbers are not exactly available anywhere that I can find. The film has had a few releases in the US and internationally at this point and is fairly easy to find on home video and on streaming services. Between the estimated DVD sales and the box office, we get a total of $80,446,124 USD. Not bad for a small indie horror film that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Or did it? Because horror fans knew it was coming and they were ready. The film had what it needed to be a hit. Starting with Neil Marshall, who had released Dog Soldiers a few years before, which had become a hit with horror fans for its original take on a werewolf story and their designs as well as being one bloody movie with a stellar cast. Dog Soldiers is, to this day, still a well-received film critically with 81% freshness from the critics aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes. Helping The Descent were the reviews for it with a consensus at 86%. The genre press loved it and the non-genre press seemed to like it enough, with a few who just hated it, but the general comments from those who hated it seemed to be that they don’t like horror, don’t understand the appeal, and don’t understand why horror fans are fans. So… Let’s just say that the genre press loved it and that’s where most horror fans get their cues from anyways. When Fangoria loves ya, you’re good to go usually.
Now, let’s take a peek at a few other aspects of the film, starting with the cast. You see, the cast here could have easily led viewers to believe this was a chick flick, some girl bonding time, girl power, babes can do it for themselves, etc. And yes, it was a bit that, but as it’s been reported, the film was nicknamed “Chicks with Picks” referring to the cast and their rock-climbing gear. The film here stars a bundle of ladies that we mostly know now, but who were a bit less familiar to American audiences at the time. The cast here is led by Shauna MacDonald who had 5 movies and 4 television shows under her belt at the time of the movies release. She was known to UK audiences, but US audiences didn’t really know her much at the time. Of course, since then, things have changes in that she has a bunch more credits, but also in that British television is no longer something far away and hard to get our hands on. Second billed here is Natalie Mendoza who had been seen in Farscape, BeastMaster, Moulin Rouge!, and Code 46 among others before The Descent. She was a more familiar face to American audiences. Then we get Alex Reid from Relic Hunter, Saskia Mulder who was better known to French audiences and those who had seen The Beach, MyAnna Buring for whom this was only the third part she’d gotten after parts on television shows Murder Prevention and Casualty. The last member of the adventurous ladies’ group is Nora-Jane Noone for whom this was the fifth part she’d gotten with her more recognizable one in the US being in Ella Enchanted. These ladies are all talented and were clearly ready for an adventure of their own, but in terms of marketing, none of them were exactly names that US audiences knew well. As a side note, the actresses cast were each from different countries which most likely helped with the international sales. The cast here is almost entirely made up of women, at least the human cast, something that was not planned from the start. The original idea was to have a mixed group of people, but once Marshall and his business partner were brought it, it was changed as horror movies at the time rarely had an all female cast. The characters were written with the help of Marshall’s female friends and some of the lines were even adjusted with the cast members to make them more realistic.
The other main aspect here that influences horror fans in their film selection is the gore, the goo, the red stuff, the effects and here, they are good. The blood looks great, the wounds are painful looking, and the creatures are interesting. There are some limitations from the budget of course, but the way the film was shot with careful angles and lighting patterns, the crawlers look amazing and are truly spooky when they first randomly show up. Their look is well-designed and well-applied, the actors playing them are unrecognizable and really talented at crawling around and being generally scary. According to interviews, it took three and a half hours to apply the makeup to each of the crawler actors. The design for them is quite well thought out with their skin being extremely white, their eyes adjusted to the darkness of the caves, their movements dictated by needs and feeding. Yes, this is a massive spoiler, these are possibly meant to be humans who crawled into these caves and made their home in the caves, adapting to the darkness, the available food sources, and the need to kill to be fed. Marshall himself has said that they are cavemen who have lived underground, not seeing the light, and evolving for that environment, so not too far from many of the fan theories online, making it feel like fans and Marshall are definitely on the same wavelength when it comes to the creatures. The crawlers here were designed by Paul Hyett and started slightly differently, looking less human and more like creatures. The decision to change them to more human-like beings that looked grubbier, dirtier, more like they lived in caves for centuries. They also were meant to have bright skin, but it didn’t look right on camera, so the color was adjusted which helped them stay more hidden and help the camera avoid the light being reflected off of them. Not to be forgotten, the cast for the crawlers was composed entirely of actors and not stunt performers to get the effect in their work closer to acting than to monster stunts. These folks here do fantastically well and really help sell the scares. A fun tidbit about these folks and the cast of ladies is that they were kept separately for the majority of the shoot so that they would not get used to each other’s presence, creating a better scare factor when the ladies first meet the crawlers.
Adding to the effects, horror fans of course love some good tension and scares which Marshall carefully planned and crafted, citing many movies as influences including Deliverance, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Thing. He clearly did his homework and the tension, along with the scares, work and are often listed as reasons to see this film in reviews.
Almost 20 years later, The Descent has aged fairly well and still stands as one of Neil Marshall’s best films along with Dog Soldiers. The Descent is his one movie that has received a sequel, but the sequel is made by an entirely new crew, with Neil Marshall now only being an executive producer. Also noteworthy is the fact that the UK release and the US release did not have the same ending. The US version has a happy ending, and the UK version has an unhappy, grim ending. Nowadays, both endings are available on home video releases so it’s easy enough to watch both. Which ending each viewer prefers will come down to how they feel about the film as a whole and about the sequel. Since then, Marshall has directed a few other movies, with uneven results, making his early fans want him to come back to low budget horror where he really seems to shine. The Descent itself is still a tense cinematic experience that is better enjoyed on a larger scale screen in as dark a room as possible, but it still works quite well on smaller television screens at home.
A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!