The Descent

Saw The Descent, the caving horror. The film opens with the protagonist, Sarah, an attractive blond woman, whitewater rafting with her extreme-sport-loving friends. She playfully pushes one of them, Juno, into the water. The day progresses but the camera keeps focusing on the sodden friend. Her face is neutral but she can't help looking grumpy, maybe even angry, in her dripping clothes. Sarah drives home with her husband and daughter and, while Sarah is talking to her husband, they are hit by a car. She wakes in the hospital, hallucinating that she is alone and without any lights. And then we get to "one year later..."

Sarah is back with six of her friends. She has little moments of pain (very well acted too! There's a moment when she hesitates, mid-swig of beer, and it becomes clear that she's kind of forcing herself through the motions. Such a small gesture to convey so much. Kudos, actress and director.) And she suffers from bad dreams but is otherwise fine. They decide to go caving at an easy, "level 2" cave. They party a bit beforehand and Juno, dressed in black, is curiously focused on amid the blond, brightly-dressed women. The film gives us ominous silences and darknesses. After two of the women gigglingly share a cigarette, they go inside their cabin and the camera rolls for a few seconds too long, letting us hear their muted talk and the hush of wind in the trees. The effect is ominous and eerie. There's a threat to the nature here which is completely ignored by the women.

So, they drive to the cave, ominous details jarringly focused on: a watch, the guidebook being put in the glove compartment, rope. They descend into the cave and go further and further into its twisty innards, until at last a cave-in traps them. This is not the cave they mean to go to and only Juno knew that. They're trapped, turning on each other, one is injured, they've lost a good amount of rope. And then the bat-creatures show up.

As with the exorcist, I think this film is much more horrific before the monsters show up. When it's just indifferent rock and oxygen who are the enemies, what can you do? Even with bat-monsters, at least there's something to fight. How do you fight two miles of rock above your head? The scariest scene in the film may have been a bout of claustrophobia just before the cave-in. Anyway, this film is clearly not that realistic and dismal. Throughout the intro, there were incongruous, red-flag jump-scares which hinted at something bad coming.

What follows are a few observations and guesses which largely rely on spoilers, particularly about the ending. Proceed at your own risk, friends! There are indications of a previous expedition. Perhaps these bat-people are their descendants? Near the end, Sarah starts fighting back against the bats. She kills a child bat, a mother bat, and then a male bat, possibly killing a whole family. She then jumps into a pool of blood and emerges, covered in gore. After this point, she becomes more ruthless, biting necks and leaving the remaining humans to die. Has she become a bat-person herself?

The women are filled with hope at one point by finding a cave-painting depicting a cave with two exits. I believe one of the exits to be death, the other to be perhaps madness, bat-creature-hood, or triumph. I also suspect that the bat-folk are metaphorical, symbolizing Sarah's grieving process. The cave is the labyrinth of her mind, or perhaps her body. This may explain the film's exclusive use of women. Women often symbolize nature and earth (warm, wet caves and so on.) Under this theory, she has perhaps latched onto Juno as an antagonistic force. In the cave, Juno is always the voice of pessimism, shouting that they will die, will run out of batteries, are not seeing daylight. The name "Juno" has connections to Roman mythology, but Juno-the-godess's role is so nebulous, I'm not sure what to make of this connection. If there is one, then I hasten to point out that the pool of blood may well be the Lethe, making Sarah forget her humanity. The original, non-happy ending has Sarah hallucinating an escape, then hallucinating once more the image of her daughter with a birthday cake. This may be her last gasp of humanity or a last gasp of sanity.

Interesting stuff. The film is fairly scary, but relies a bit too hard on jumps for my liking. I'd much rather see what suggestive silences and psychodrama can do. Then again, I was grousing about the creatures earlier as well, so maybe I just wanted to see a fundamentally different film. Oh well. A good film, rich with metaphor and grim action, only sometimes a bit cheap with the jumps.