One Of The Greatest Horror Movies Ever Made Is A Modern Classic Streaming On Amazon

The Descent breaks the typical Hollywood mold by featuring an all-female cast of six friends who are supposed to explore a fully mapped-out cave system, but after the entrance collapses behind them, the organizer admits she lied, and they are now trapped in an unexplored cave. That right there is terrifying enough for me, but the film adds to the tension with the discovery of a creepy cave painting, and then one of the group injures her leg, trying to escape, adding to the claustrophobic nightmare fuel.

If that wasn’t enough, the group soon encountered “Crawlers,” strange, albino human-like creatures that had evolved for the dark environment of the cave, and they enjoy eating people.

I’ll admit, I had trouble keeping track of all of the characters at first, as The Descent is a dark movie, but very soon, they start to get killed off, either from the Crawlers, the cave environment, or in one particularly gruesome moment, a large stone induced mercy killing. By the time you reach the 30-minute mark, the tension has already hit the high-water mark for most other horror movies, but amazingly, the film keeps going, and it keeps going higher.

And yet, what makes the film great isn’t the copious amounts of bloodshed and murder; it’s the raw human emotion underneath it all that elevates The Descent and embraces the very best parts of the horror genre.

Over the last few years, The Descent has received some criticism that it would be a more effective film without the inclusion of the Crawlers, and as much as I love the film as is, I have to agree. The group dynamics at play and how individuals react to a high-stress situation provide plenty of drama, tension, and even horror without the need to deal with sub-human cannibals. There are a few choices that will make you stop and think and consider: is there anyone in your friend group that would do that?

Would you do that?

The oppressive darkness and despair of The Descent, which was so hard to watch that the studio had director Neil Marshall (known for Dog Soldiers and the biggest Game of Thrones episodes, “Blackwater” and “Watchers on the Wall”) change the ending to be a little more hopeful. Amazingly, the film became a huge hit, even with the still very depressing ending, bringing in nearly $60 million at the box office against a production budget that came in under $10 million.

There’s also a sequel, The Descent Part 2, which I thought undermined the emotional stakes of the original and is, honestly, inferior in every way by leaning harder into the slasher except for the Crawlers.

REVIEW SCORE

If you want a horror movie that will make you uneasy, and not because of copious amounts of gore, The Descent is the perfect movie for you. It still has blood, and there are a few great deaths to be found, but it has emotion, tension, and the feeling of real stakes that will draw you in and never let go. If you haven’t experienced this film yet, you can stream it on Amazon Freevee, or go through Video on Demand using AppleTV or Google Play.