The Descent (film): Difference between revisions

* [[California Doubling]]: Set in America (aside from the beginning of the movie), filmed in England and Scotland.

* [[Cerebus Callback]]: The group picture the girls take of themselves the morning of the caving trip shows up at the end with the credits rolling over it.

** {{spoiler|Juno's necklace}}. Also, {{spoiler|Sam's watch}}.

** Also the climbing picks. In [[Real Life]], those are only used to climb frozen waterfalls, but they're necessary to the movie as weapons.

* [[Death By Pragmatism]]: Justified with {{spoiler|Juno.}} She was {{spoiler|murdered}} after she accidentally {{spoiler|fatally wounded Beth}} and then ran away. Sarah found out, but she ''didn't'' know it was an accident...

* [[Developing Doomed Characters]]: Pulled off successfully. The crawlers don't arrive until halfway through the film, but most critics appreciated that because the time was spent character building and establishing the decaying trust within the group and sense of claustrophobia. Some even complained that the crawlers showed up at all to interrupt the caving drama.

** The original UK ending: {{spoiler|Everyone dies. Sarah cripples Juno and leaves her for the crawlers, then [[Hope Spot|imagines escaping]]. [[Cruel Twist Ending|She wakes up]], hallucinates that her daughter is there, and gives up to stay with the hallucination.}}

** The US ending: {{spoiler|After killing Juno, Sarah really does escape, and hallucinates Juno's creepy looking ghost is there with her. She's an [[Ax Crazy]] murderer, her family and friends are all dead, and there are still strong implications that she's just imagining this and is still in the cave.}} Considering they changed the ending because it was too bleak, there isn't that much of a difference.

* [[Fan Disservice]]: Sarah spends a good deal of the last part of the film in her tight vest top after shedding her other layers, and covered in sweat. She also happens to be covered in blood from head to foot. (Others may see this as [[Fan Service]], if you're into that kind of thing...)

* [[Final Girl]]: Until the sequel changed the canon, Sarah {{spoiler|made herself into the [[Final Girl]]. And then died, as a consequence of not having Juno around to help her, snap her out of her crazy hallucinating reverie, or rage-fuel her badassery and survival instincts. Oops.}}

** Happens to {{spoiler|Sarah}} ''twice'': first time is when {{spoiler|she loses her husband and daughter in a horrific car accident one year prior to the caving trip}}, and the second is when she [[Ax Crazy|completely snaps]] after being attacked by the Crawlers, being forced to watch said Crawlers partially devour the corpse of {{spoiler|Holly}} directly in front of her, and then granting {{spoiler|Beth's}} [[I Cannot Self-Terminate]] request by {{spoiler|bashing her head in with a rock}}. Then there's the small fact that she mistakenly believes that {{spoiler|Juno deliberately stabbed Beth through the throat}}...

** Following Sarah's claims ([[Cassandra Truth|initially dismissed as hallucinations by the rest of the group]]) that she saw "a man", Becca has a smaller-scale [[Freak-Out]] when the girls stumble across {{spoiler|the Crawlers' feeding ground}}, declaring "Oh, '''fuck it!'''" and hysterically screaming out for help on the off-chance that someone else may be down there to help them.

** One of the first sightings of a Crawler is {{spoiler|right after the tunnel collapse, on a ledge when Sarah is sweeping the cave with her flashlight.}} It's visible for barely one second.

** The ''very first'' sighting of a Crawler can be seen very, very briefly in the scene where {{spoiler|Juno lights up a flare for the first time and throws it into the middle of the cave}}. It is very difficult to spot without pausing and looking closely. According to [[Word of God|Neil Marshall]], this is actually a continuity error - the Crawler is one of the film crew. When this mistake was spotted, rather than remove it digitally, [[Throw It In|the crewmember's face was deliberately whitened to bring it out more]], thus making him look like a hiding Crawler.

* [[Infant Immortality]]: Brutally averted near the beginning of the movie. Also, the death of {{spoiler|the child Crawler}} may also count.

* [[It Gets Worse]]: And it never really stops.

** Starting with the birds and going on from there.

** There's an even earlier one when Sarah has her nightmare in the cabin.

* [[Kill the Cutie]]: {{spoiler|Sam}}.

** {{spoiler|Everyone who gets a speaking part dies, two of them within the first five minutes. To be fair, there are only eight people in the whole cast. Playing people, at least.}}

** That is, until the sequel changed this. {{spoiler|Sarah gets it together enough to stagger out of an entrance to the cave, albeit with amnesia about the last two days.}}

* [[Not Quite Dead]]: {{spoiler|Beth.}}

* [[Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here]]: Holly is annoyed that Juno is taking them to Borham Caverns, a cave system for tourists, as she believes it will be boring. It later turns out that {{spoiler|Juno deliberately led them to an unknown cave system instead}}.

** For some of the jump scares, it's fairly easy to tell that something bad is going happen soon. We don't know what, where or exactly when, so being somewhat forewarned only makes it that much more frightening.

** For the first 2/3 of the film, pretty much ''nothing does happen'', instead relying on the atmosphere of the cave itself to create the sense of dread. For this reason, many find this actually ''scarier'' than the Crawlers.

** The facial expression isn't seen, but the tone of voice says it all: "Dead animals! ''Hundreds'' of them!"

** Earlier, there's the looks on Sarah and Beth's faces when {{spoiler|the cave tunnel starts to collapse}}.

* [[Rock Bottom]]: After Sarah gets stuck in a tight passage, Beth tries to calm her down, saying that the worst thing that has happened to Sarah has already happened, and generally implies that nothing bad is going to happen again. Naturally, [[It Got Worse|it gets worse]]. Much worse.

* [[Rule of Symbolism]]: When {{spoiler|Sarah}} unleashes her [[Howl of Sorrow]], the action cuts back to Juno, Becca and Sam, who hear a Crawler scream. The sounds are edited so it sounds as though {{spoiler|Sarah's}} scream has suddenly changed into that of one of the Crawlers'. Later (in the original UK ending, anyway), {{spoiler|Sarah}} rises from the floor of the cave in a manner ''very'' reminiscent of the way a Crawler would move.

** The shots of the river during the prologue, the shots of the Appalachian Mountains, and the first cave chamber.

** [[Scenery Gorn]]: The Crawlers' chambers.

* [[Shoo Out the Clowns]]: One of the first characters to go is {{spoiler|Holly, the crazy awesome chick.}}

** "[[I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder|I'm an English teacher]], not fucking [[Tomb Raider]]."

** The music in the scene where Juno and Sarah move through the caverns by flare light bears unmistakable resemblance to Morricone's theme from The Thing.

** The scene where the team climbs the rockface into the feeding chamber is an almost shot for shot replication of the scene in ''[[Alien]]'' where Lambert and Kane climb up to meet the Space Jockey.

** {{spoiler|The first crawlspace is clearly limestone, notoriously treacherous for cave-ins if not reinforced by more stable minerals. Given the close proximity to a riverbed, it's not unreasonable to assume it's just a thin coating... in a level 2 cave.}}

** The Crawlers have the auditory [[Shout-Out]] to the ''[[Predator]]'' series. {{spoiler|They're similar to the clicks dolphins make, and are a very early tip-off that they use sonar.}}

* [[Tears of Blood]]: Near the end of the film, {{spoiler|when Sarah hallucinates the presence of Juno's ghost, the latter has blood seeping from her eyes}}.

* {{spoiler|[[Through the Eyes of Madness]]: Since Sarah was hallucinating without a doubt at several separate points, there is a popular theory that the cave monsters were all in her mind and it was her that killed all her friends. The director originally put a crawler silhouette into the first hallucination sequence (which took place outside the cave) but had it edited out because he wanted to leave it more ambiguous.}}

** {{spoiler|Beth}} walks very slowly up to within arm's reach of an ice-pick wielding {{spoiler|Juno}}, and chooses never to say or do anything to announce her presence. {{spoiler|Juno mistakes her for a crawler and puts the pick through her neck.}}

** {{spoiler|Holly.}} Yes, run ahead of your fellow spelunkers in an unknown cave system! And you're surprised you fell in a hole?!

** [[Tropes Are Not Bad]], however, and {{spoiler|Beth}} is very likely in shock, and {{spoiler|Holly}} was already well-established as a reckless sort.

* [[Too Soon]]: The 2005 Underground bombings in London threatened to delay the film's British release, for fear that this trope would keep people away from a film about death below ground. Eventually the film was released on schedule, but posters of a lone woman trapped and screaming in the dark were replaced by new ones of all six women standing united against it.

* [[Vasquez Always Dies]]: {{spoiler|Holly. Though as everybody dies, it's more like Vasquez dies first.}}

* [[Senseless Sacrifice]]: {{spoiler|Greg}} tackles one of the Crawlers into a chasm to give {{spoiler|Cath}} a chance to get to the other side whereupon she's killed by a Crawler on the other side. Admittedly, he was probably dying at the time due to having had the side of his neck torn out.

* [[This Is a Drill]]: Greg uses a power drill in his kit to kill one of the crawlers by drilling into its head.

* [[Vasquez Always Dies]]: {{spoiler|Juno and Sarah.}}

* [[Wild Child]]: {{spoiler|Juno}} initially seems to have reverted to this in her survival. She gets better.

[[Category:The Descent]]

[[Category:Film]]