The Descent

2005
R
1h 39m

IMDb RATING

7.2/10

254K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

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Monster Horror Mountain Adventure Psychological Thriller Adventure Horror Thriller

A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.2/10

254K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

360

331

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 8 wins & 22 nominations

Videos1

Trailer 2:04

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Twenty-one separate cave sets were built for the film. These were carefully reused with different camera angles, set dressing and lighting to suggest a nearly endless collection of interconnected tunnels and caverns. For realism, the makers often limited the lighting of the sets to light sources that the protagonists brought with them, such as flashlights, helmet lights and light sticks.

Goofs
All of the spines in the various bone piles throughout the movie have the spines intact and the inter vertebral disks still present in the spines. Inter vertebral disks, however, are cartilage, not bone, and would have decayed (especially given that there is no clothing, hair, or fur in the bone piles, meaning that the bones are quite old). The spine segments should be scattered and in pieces, not in long segments.

Quotes
Beth: I'm an English teacher, not fucking Tomb Raider.

Crazy credits
The creature's snarling sound can be heard at the end of the credits.

Alternate versions
SPOILER: The endings of the US and UK versions differ. In the end, Sarah wakes up at the bottom of the cave, crawls out, and makes her way back to the car. When she is driving away, she pulls over and vomits, and when she leans back into the car, she is startled by the ghost of Juno sitting in the passenger seat. The US version cuts to the credits here. In the UK version, this apparition causes Sarah to wake up for real at the bottom of the cave, revealing her escape to be just a dream. She then has a vision of her daughter's birthday cake, which we see is just her torch. The camera backs out, the voices of the creatures can be heard again and are increasing in strength as they are closing in on her, and the movie ends. This ending was considered "too dark" for US audiences.

Connections
Edited into The Descent: Deleted and Extended Scenes (2006)

User reviews1.3K

Review

Featured review

8/10

The Descent Sacres Good

A friend picked The Descent as a film for us to see together and I wasn't all that excited about the choice. I was very mistaken. The Descent is a scary fun film. If you're claustrophobic or in general just don't like tight spaces then you might find this film particularly unnerving. The descent down into the tiniest caves and crevices of the earth gave me considerable anxiety. During their exploring of the caves they start to get the feeling that they are not down there alone. Something else is down there but just not sure what it is. That alone creates even more tension and fright to be down a space like that with some unknown creature around. It was at this time that for me it went in a different direction with the creatures becoming the new central element of the story. This is fine but it kind of turned into a more typical killer monster/creature thing. Sure they idea of the creatures being down there is good but the extent to which they are utilized was a bit too much for me. Despite this one criticism, The Descent is definitely a film to check out.