The Descent (2005)

IMDb plot summary: A caving expedition goes horribly wrong when six explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.

Directed by Neil Marshall. Stars Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, and Alex Reid.

The Descent is a horror film about a group of women friends meeting for the first time in a while to go spelunking in an Appalachian cave. When they get there, they become trapped. There's nobody coming to rescue them, and there are also creatures down there in the dark with them. I watched this one on Amazon Prime, and it was extremely helpful to have the Amazon X-ray the Prime X-ray function available so that when I couldn't figure out which of the seven identical women was on screen, it told me who it was. Otherwise I would never have kept any of these women straight. This movie is claustrophobic and brings that vibe out strongly throughout. The characters are a little bit slower than I'd like in gathering or inferring information about the creatures... although of course, they're panicking, so they're not going to be as focused on discovery as I wanted them to be. I didn't like the ending at all. I found to be a needlessly stupid jump scare style ending that wasn't helpful at all in terms of the story or the scares. I liked the film up until that moment, and that brought it way down in my estimation. That aside, though, if you want a creepy claustrophobic people-in-the-dark movie, this is a pretty good one.

🎥 The Descent (2005)

📊 Ranked #1382/4214 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 67

beat An Innocent Man (#2158 → #2159)

lost to Baby Driver (held at #1132)

beat The Tragedy of Macbeth (#1642 → #1643)

beat DragonHeart (#1388 → #1389)

lost to Airheads (held at #1260)

lost to A League of Their Own (held at #1324)

lost to She's Gotta Have It (held at #1355)

lost to L'Atalante (held at #1371)

lost to Watchmen (held at #1379)

beat Overboard (#1384 → #1385)

lost to Just Imagine (held at #1381)