Neil Marshall (Britain, 1970) debuted with
the horror films Dog Soldiers (2002) and The Descent (2005).
The latter packs plenty of suspense although it is a little frustrating that
the camera often doesn't let us see clearly the objects and the faces in the dark.
There is already a lot of suspense before the monsters appear.
Sarah, Juno and Beth end a whitewater rafting adventure. Sarah's husband Paul and their little daughter are waiting for her. When they part from the other girls, we see that Juno stares at Paul with a sad look on her face.
Paul is lost in his thought while driving back home and crashes against another car, killing himself and the little girl. Sarah survives.
One year later, Juno organizes a cave expedition with Sarah, Beth and three other young women: Sam, Rebecca and Holly.
Sarah is still easily hurt by references to men or children.
The six ladies drive to a remote location, park the cars and hike to the cave entrance, which is just a giant hole.
They proceed inside the cave trusting that Juno knows the way out but it soon appears that it is not easy.
To make matters worse, a tunnel collapses behind them, almost killing Sarah
and blocking the way back to the same entrance. Juno confesses that
she tricked them: instead of a popular cave, Juno decided to explore an unexplored cave for which there is no map. And there is no hope of being rescued because
they applied for a permit to explore the popular cave, which means that nobody knows they are in this one. Their only option is to continue deep inside the cave. Unfortunately the route gets more and more difficult and acrobatic moves are required to cross giant gaps and climb vertical chimneys.
They think that nobody has been there before but then they find climbing equipment and cave paintings.
Holly falls into a hole and breaks a leg. They improvise a split and start
carrying her.
Sarah is convinced that she saw a man in the cave, but Juno scolds her.
Sarah is soon vindicated because a strange creature soon attacks them.
The screeching creature captures, kills and devours Holly.
The ladies now realize that the cave is littered with animal bones.
Monsters keep appearing from everywhere and attacking the ladies.
Juno is the first one to find a way to kill them with her axe, but she
is separated from the others. Thinking that she is being attacked from
behind, Juno turns and stabs... Beth. As Beth seems to be dying, the terrified
Juno leaves her behind.
Juno realizes that someone ventured into the cave from the other direction and left markings on the walls, so there is a way out, but she has to kill one
monster after the other while she's trying to find the others.
Finally, she finds Sam and Rebecca but refuses to leave without Sarah.
Sam realizes that the monsters are blind and only hunt by sound.
They evolved in the darkness of the caves just like bats.
Sarah, wandering alone, stumbles on the agonizing Beth, who is still alive
and whispers that Juno stabbed her and that Juno had an affair with Sarah's
husband. Beth then begs Sarah to kill her so she won't be eaten alive by the
monsters, which Sarah does.
Juno is desperately looking for Sarah, unaware that now Sarah hates her.
We guess that the very car accident happened because Sarah's husband was
thinking of Juno while driving home.
Sarah is now a killer and begins killing monsters.
Sam and Rebecca are killed and Juno remains alone.
Juno and Sarah finally runs into each other and fight the monsters together while moving towards the exit, but Sarah's look tells Juno that Sarah has changed.
When they seem to be near the exit, Sarah confronts Juno and stabs her with her axe, leaving her to be devoured by monsters.
Sarah flees but falls
falls into a hole and remains unconscious until... daylight wakes her up.
She can see the exit and crawls up towards it. She is out in minutes and
realizes she is near the cars. She gets into a car and, covered in blood,
drives away as fast as she can. She then stops to throw up. When she looks back
into the car, Juno is sitting in the passenger's seat next to her...
Note: the original ending is that Sarah wakes up in the cave alone (without ever regrouping with Juno) while the monsters are closing in on her. The US version of the film is a sort of happy ending because Sarah survives, but ends with the ghost of Juno in the car.
Unfortunately, later Marshall wasted his talent with
the mediocre sci-fi movie Doomsday (2008),
the historical Centurion (2010),
the superhero movie Hellboy (2019),
the horror movie The Reckoning (2020),
The Lair (2022) and
Duchess (2024).
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