Neil Marshall’s The Descent blends film and digital to craft claustrophobic terror, using darkness and realism to redefine early 2000s horror.

It is fairly easy to characterize horror films from the early 2000s as loud and obsessed with the found footage subgenre, which, admittedly, flooded theaters after 2007. The advent of digital technology as a new way of shooting films gave many filmmakers new possibilities for storytelling, before quickly running out of steam a few years later once the found footage wave had passed. But two years before the success of Paranormal Activity and Rec, director Neil Marshall took the first step towards this subgenre with The Descent. Skillfully building relentless terror and making relevant use of the new tools of his time at his disposal.

The setup of The Descent is fairly simple: while exploring, a group of girls gradually find themselves trapped in a cave that increasingly turns out to be an underground hell. And if the initial narrative is simple, it is precisely in order to develop the horror of everything the cave has in store and the omnipresent fear that stems from this environment. It’s clear that the film comes into its own once the threat is established. While Marshall relies on fairly heavy-handed and predictable surprises in the first act to try to keep our attention, the second act makes much better use of its moments of terror. While it’s easy to overlook the cinematography in its first half due to the strong blue and cold tones that characterized the movies of the early 2000s, The Descent proves to be much more subtle and intelligent in its use of light once our group of girls arrives in the cave.

What makes The Descent so special is also the way it pushes the capabilities of Super 35mm film cameras to plunge scenes into darkness with only a meager light source. And this in an era when digital is largely replacing film on film sets. Today, the choice would undoubtedly be made in favor of a digital camera rather than film, given the ability of cameras to capture beautiful images with little light. But here, Marshall is not concerned with capturing beautiful images on camera; on the contrary, darkness is what gives the film its power. It is this constant darkness that allows the film to achieve a greater realism in relation to the situation of our characters, but also a greater immersion for the viewer. The viewer and the character are therefore on an equal level, and Marshall robs us of our usual omniscience. Like Juno (Natalie Mendoza) or Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), these claustrophobic caves and cavities suffocate us, and only a simple lighter or glow stick helps us see, further reinforcing our character’s isolation within the setting and space. The darkness around us thus becomes a playground that Marshall can exploit to surprise us and bring his monsters at us from any direction.

While the caves and caverns our group of girls sets out to explore appear to be a playground for discovery and excitement, they quickly transform into a place that reveals our true selves. Personalities assert themselves, egos clash, and choices become crucial. Like an underwater world plunged into darkness, the underground calls for exploration, danger and uncovering, like bait leading us to our doom. Gradually, the cave closes in on itself to imprison our characters and change their status. It is no longer a question of the girls facing a cave in the material sense, but facing something that seems to want to drag our characters down into the depths and into the monsters.

Once our group is confronted with these blind, semi-human creatures, this underground world separates us from any notion of reality and even brings us closer to a religious vision of hell, a place that cannot be fully materialized or seen, a place that escapes our geographical notions. The further the girls advance and descend into the depths of this underworld, the less we are able to clearly picture this space, which increasingly resembles Giovanni da Modena’s Inferno, becoming nothing but darkness, fire, blood, and devouring half-human beasts.

Using new digital tools in a relevant way, The Descent uses found footage elements to fuel its horror. Without ever fully diving into the subgenre like many films of that era would later do, Marshall incorporates his narrative with a camera carried by Sarah, which once again puts us on equal footing with our characters. We see what they see, and when the creature’s face appears on camera for the first time, the surprise is the same for all of us. Similarly, when Sarah silently films the ghouls feeding on the bodies, the intradiegetic camera is the only way to see what is happening, to observe these monsters through infrared vision. The camera within the narrative therefore feeds our perspective without breaking the immersion. It’s a very clever way for Marshall to give a different view and perspective of the cave and its monsters. Found footage is a means for the director to tell his horror story, a tool, another lens in his workshop to explore his story.

It’s no surprise that The Descent has gained such renown in the horror genre. Preceding the found footage wave, Neil Marshall manages to use the specificity of what will become this new genre to fuel his narrative, while creating his own production style around it. Its narrative structure is simple and effective, supported above all by female characters who fill the frame with aura. Coupled with a frenetic pace and a few cult shots that linger in our memory, and we have the perfect recipe for a film that has become a cult classic.