The Descent - Analysis

There are several different areas to concentrate your analysis on for the British Film and Genre topic.  These are:

The Descent as a British Film.
The Descent and the horror genre.
Narrative structure of The Descent.
Representation in The Descent.
Key Sequences.

The Descent as a British Film.


The film's key cast and crew were all British as was its financing.  It was written & directed by Neil Marshall (a British director, editor and screenwriter), it was filmed entirely in the UK (even though it was set in North America), the cast & crew is predominately British, the main production company is Celador Films which is a UK company, and the Producer was Christian Colson (another Brit).

Despite this, the film does not use the typical British iconography or overall 'style'.  It does in fact look much more similar to Hollywood-produced fare. There are some characteristics of British film apparent despite the surface sheen however.  The story and script are more character-based than typical American Horror movies.  There is also a sub-plot involving an affair one of the characters (Juno) had with one of the other's (Sarah) husband.  This could be argued is a characteristic of British film.  Most significantly however, the ending of the film is very downbeat and pessimistic.  Sarah hallucinates her escape from the cave and the audience believe this to be true and that she is safe (though her friends are all dead) but then there is the sudden cut back to the cave and the audience sees that Sarah is in fact still trapped underground.  As she hallucinates her dead daughter appearing in front of her, we hear the sounds of approaching crawlers and the camera pulls back revealing just how deep underground she really is.  This firmly states to the audience that Sarah's chances of survival are virtually non-existent.  

It is particularly relevant that the American theatrical release of this film cut this ending out and the film ended with Sarah escaping the cave system.

The Descent and the horror genre.


The film is quite clearly part of the horror genre due to its use of horror conventions:

The Crawlers:

The use of blood and gore:

Scary music:

Narrative structure of The Descent.
The Descent uses the 3 act structure typical of the vast majority of American films.  It has a clear set-up, conflict and resolution.  What makes it different however is the fact that for the first half of the film the main 'villains' or antagonists (the vicious and carnivorous crawlers) do not appear and are only very subtly hinted at.  The main drama and tension is derived from the girls' attempts to escape from the cave.

Act 1:  Set-up:  The film introduces the group of girls and we meet each of them and learn a little about their characters.  They enter the caves.
Act 2: The girls become stuck after a cave-in and try to find a way out by travelling through the caves.  they overcome various obstacles before being attacked by the creatures at the mid-point.
Act 3:  Juno and Sarah are the only ones left alive and they begin to fight back.  Just as the big face-off against the creatures seems about to happen however, Sarah stabs Juno with her pick and leaves her for dead.  She then hallucinates her escape.

Todorov's theory of a classic Hollywood narrative also applies to this film.

Representation in The Descent.
Gender is obviously a very significant area of representation in this film.  It is unusual for a film to focus solely on a group of female characters and especially so for a horror film.

Key Sequences.