This brings up an important question: if the un-cut film is already out there, isn't it a bit late to cut stuff out for an American theatrical version? We already know cuts were made. Usually, a snipped-up version is the only one there is, and that's why we put up with it. But if we know what's been cut and where we can see the uncut film, why the hell would we go to the theaters?

A note to Holywood editors: you have no clue what we want to see in the theaters. We want directors' cuts sooner instead of later. We don't want your meddling.

JE: In this case, the only difference is that they snipped off one final scene for the American release. Other than that, there's no difference -- but I'll bet you they'll include the British ending on the US Region 1 NTSC DVD!

As you may recall, I wrote a comment concerning the spliced ending of The Descent, as well as mentioned my intense anticipation for the movie to open in the US.

Today I saw it at the earliest show possible.

I couldn't have been more disappointed.

I would even go as far to say I loathed it.

The opening scene of Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers is all one needs to see in order to get that movie's appeal. The bit with the sound of the zipper in the tent is a prime example of how a movie riddled with cliches (and Dog Soldiers certainly is) can be elevated to near brilliance by the directors huge amount of passion and excitement to do something creative where other films merely go through the motions.

The Descent - in my opinion - DID go through more than the motions; my patience. I kept waiting and waiting for it to give me something I hadn't seen, or at the very least put a new twist on it (like the zipper). Alas, I kept waiting.

I honestly can't recall a single scene that wasn't lifted without wit or enthusiasm from another, better film. It's one thing to ape something from a completely separate genre (the bible verse in Pulp Fiction is an example), but this movie kept trying to get by on stealing from it's own cinematic brothers.

(SPOILERS)

It had the "I won't leave you behind!" scene, the "don't leave me like this" mercy killing, birds fluttering past the actors to give us a jump, the spooky dream sequence, the betrayal from within the group... you get the idea.

And all of this would have been well and good if it was done A) tongue in cheek, or B) it happened to interesting characters. Unfortunately, over half the group is given no back-story or depth whatsoever, and the other characters end up conflicted by what else? A LOVE TRIANGLE. OF COURSE! They're women! what else could they have to squabble over?!?! (heavy sarcasm).

For all it's "girl power" posturing, I could never get past the fact that the "tough" girls were clearly a man's idea of what makes a woman "tough" (she cuts her hair super short! she has a sticker that says "rock chick"!).

I watched stupefied as the exact same scene happened back-to-back to Sarah, and then to Juno and "the other one" (the creature hovers around and as long as you don't move, it can't see you). The writer of Predator called. It wants it's scene back.

Speaking of Predator, the sound the creatures made sounds awfully familiar.

How many times does Neil Marshall think we need to see the characters happen upon a pile of bones before it's no longer scary (and after we've seen the wonky creatures, it's no longer threatening)?

But something was missing after it was over. There was one cliche stone left unturned, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Until I watched this addition to the ending. How could this film be more hack-ey? Tack on a B.S. twilight-zonish "she's really just crazy/it was all a dream/ambiguious=artful" ending.

I could go on and on but I'm not completely sure this film deserves another moment of my time. Though it'll probably get another moment or two as I tell all my friends to avoid it like the plague.

What a huge let-down.

I like the ambiguity of that extra scene, and it's viscerally satisfying to see those eerie shots of Sarah's daughter holding the birthday cake pay off in such a manner. Still, I kinda like the American ending without that extra scene as well. I think the movie, in its own way, is about a more figurative "descent": from civilization to savagery. (SPOILER ALERT) Sarah's act of stabbing Juno in the leg and allowing her to be eaten by the crawlers, it seems to me, completes a disturbing transformation from traumatized victim to ruthless victimizer. Thus what may seem to others as merely yet another cheap "final scare" in fact suggests that perhaps she will be traumatized by something else: the knowledge that she allowed a friend to die, killed her indirectly. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I find it telling that Neil Marshall picked ghost Juno to be the one "sitting" next to Sarah in the car after she had thrown up.

Overall, I liked The Descent, although I profess to liking its first half---when the women are faced with cliffhanger challenges like collapsing rocks and crossing across deep, dark chasms---more than its gorier, supernatural second half. (In fact, I couldn't help but think of that great opening sequence of Renny Harlin's Cliffhanger as I was watching the women try to cross that chasm; it generated the same kind of breathtaking suspense, though thankfully no one died at the end of it.) At least, though, it isn't a celebration of cruelty a la the Saw movies; it's a real horror film, scary not only for its occasional jolts, but also on deeper levels.

Oh, and love triangle? Did I miss something? I don't remember a love triangle in the film...

I absolutely loved the first half of this film, with the intense, claustrophobic cave exploration scenes. [SPOILER ALERT!] That sequence in which each of them crawls down the narrow pipe and then Sarah gets stuck is incredibly intense. In fact, just about everything in the cave is so viscerally potent until [IT'S SPOILERS THE REST OF THE WAY] ... monster time.

Who decided, "Hey, you know, being trapped in a cave with limited batteries, and no way out... that's OK, but how do we make it really scary? Hey, how about albino cave monsters!" From this point on, I found myself completely disengaged from the film, largely because I just kept asking (out loud at least once): Why? Why? Why did we need the albino cave monsters? The CAVE is scary!!! The darkness is scary!!! The albino cave monsters... not!

Man or, in this case, woman vs. nature. That's intense. I have a primordial fear of darkness and enclosed spaces, of being buried alive. I do not have a primordial fear of being eaten by Gollum.

Once the monsters show up, poof, this movie just ceases to exist as far as I'm concerned. The intense creepy terror is replaced by the white noise of mindless hack 'n slash which pales on the horror scale compared to the first half.

All you need is the cave. No monsters! None! Who thought they needed monsters here? This has the stink of studio executive "notes" all over it.

This could have been a great movie. Instead, it just settled for the same ol' , same ol'. What a lost opportunity. I wish I could focus on the exceptional work in the first half, but since it was all flushed away, I can't help but feel cheated, rather than appreciative for what did work.

I don't know what to think about the British cut. If I could see it again without the knowledge of the American version I guess I could make an honest evaluation. But I like the American cut just fine, thank you. I liked Sarah, felt bad for her losses; but I'm now haunted by the fact that there is one more thing she has to obsess about: Juno. If I had seen the British version instead, I don't think the film would resonate with me on the same level.

Re: the love triangle: (MAJOR SPOILER)
The piece of Jewelry that Beth pulled off of Juno was engraved "Love Each Day," a favorite saying of Sarah's late husband. As soon as Sarah saw that, she realized why Juno bolted Scotland so fast after the accident, and she probably put blame on Juno for the accident, seeing as the car drifted lanes because Paul and Sarah were discussing his seeming "distant," probably because of his affair with Juno. So not only did Sarah see Juno as responsible for Beth's death in the caves (and, ultimately, everyone's, since she was the one who led them into the uncharted cave), but for Paul and Jessica, too. So leaving her hobbled but alive to experience a harsh death at the hands of the Crawlers was the punishment Sarah handed down for Juno "killing" everyone Sarah cared about in the world.

[many SPOILERS ahead]

I Really enjoyed certain parts of this movie - the hospital scene near the beginning was nothing short of brilliant, and some of the early cave exploration was exciting and tense.

I Did find myself a bit lost as the movie progressed-
I try to think of it as a metaphorical exploration of Sarah's consciousness rather than an actual horror-adventure story, which make the albino flesh eaters less out of place.
The hospital scene was the first clue i got - the lights turning off made it clear that this movie isn't one that should be taken literally.
Notice how early in the story Sarah does seem to be suspicious of Juno's interaction with Paul. What if the Monsters represent Sarah's growing awareness of this affair taking place between her friend and her husband? the blind mosnters (perhaps because she didn't Want to know?) lurk in the depths of her consciousness and as the movie progresses they come out, first only for brief glimpses, and later on at full numbers, tearing flesh and demanding confrontation. At the end, Sarah is one with the creatures - she Knows the truth, and she's ready to deal with it. The actual act of hurting Juno may have never taken place, but more importantly- it symbolizes the end of their friendship.

I'm wodering whether or not anybody out there agrees with my take on it, and whether there's someone that can help me make more sense of it. The significance of the daughter , for example, is baffling to me. She keeps being shown with her birthday cake, the candles perhaps represent the six girls, the bond between them, and as each candle is blown, a friendship is lost.
any ideas?

Kenji, Christopher: I think I liked the pre-"crawlers" stuff best, too -- especially the way they are introduced: first as "did I just see that?" shadows, then as a more substantial silhouette, a spectre glimpsed through the infrared setting on a video camera... Each time, they get more and more "real" (kind of like the way Tyler Durden seeps into "Fight Club").

ejay: I prefer to read the movie somewhat as you suggest. If you see the movie as being about what happens in Sarah's head (and remember all the warnings about how your mind plays tricks on you "down there" and how feelings of panic and claustrophobia -- and even hallucinations -- are not uncommon), then it feels right. In the British ending, Sarah, after being baptised in blood, does actually seem to have taken on the physical characteristics of the crawlers. The organic/psychological texture of the subterranean world emphasizes that this is an internal experience (kind of like the interior of the mothership in "Alien"). All the movie references may indeed be there because Sarah (and the movie audience) has seen these movies and they have become part of her (and our) imaginative consciousness. (I was reminded of this in the scene in "World Trade Center" when one of the men trapped in the tangled subterranean debris finds himself remembering bits of "G.I. Jane" and "Starsky and Hutch." That's the way people's minds work.)

Jordan: I'm sorry you hated it so much, but I think you're concentrating on minor plot and character elements in a movie that deliberately puts hardly any emphasis on plot and character. That's one of the things I appreciate so much about it, as I wrote in my review. To me, it's more of a dreamlike experience. And that image in which Sarah climbs a slope of bones toward the light is just one of many that will stay with me for a long, long time.

I think ejay is right: You can see the whole "real" part of the movie ending in the hospital with the encroaching darkness. Everything else could be Sarah's journey toward joining her daughter, and in order to get there, she has to deal with some repressed feelings and kill off the rest of her waking life first...

SPOILERS, obviously
I dig the American cut more. More to the point, scarier, etc. Going further than that raises too many questions. If it is all in Sarah's head, how did she know about Juno leaving after the accident? There was too much thought put into the design, evolution, and biology of the creepers for this to be completely non-literal.

Personally, I think the movie works best at face value. The nightmare of the cave plays into Sarah's already fragile psychological state. This leads to the death of Juno. After she's out and the truck drives past, she's unhinged completely, thus, she sees her dead friend's ghost sitting next to her.

So it's not completely literal, but visceral enough to scare the hell out of me. People seem to want to treat this movie like a Horror Wizard of Oz and it's not. Remember the scene at the end? "You were there, and you, and you..."

I saw the movie in its original UK cut, and absolutely loved the brutal ambiguity of that ending. For all we know, this is Sarah years later, still trapped in the cave but too strong to die: a slave of her survival instincts. The HORROR!

It's a great movie from beginning to end. I watched it alone in the dark, at home with Dolby surround headphones on. One of the scares - with Sarah standing before the window right before you-know-what - was so powerful that I jumped up and nearly fell off the sofa!

Jim:

Thanks for not jumping down my throat like some people on the internet do when you disagree with them. I love your blog and wasn't looking to make enemies.

But I do think that what you said about the Crawlers and their similar treatment to Tyler Durden is a perfect example of what I found so witless about The Descent.

Fight Club (one of my favorites) took the character of The Narrator, and in creating another side to his personality (Tyler), didn't just merely make broad observations about what The Narrator isn't - and then create the opposite. It didn't simply say: "The Narrator is weak, so Tyler has to be strong" and leave it at that. Fight Club makes a fascinating and complicated character out of Tyler. The Descent only has the wit to represent Sarah's demons with... well... demons.

Apprently Neil Marshall was behind the cut of the film himself. Not sure why he chose to change the ending, but here is a link to an interview:
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kpbs/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&id=948596&pid=31&sid=8

Anyway, when I saw the film I thought the last shot implies she was still in the cave. We see her eyes in terror and black all around her. Loved the film.

JE: Thanks. I ordered the 2-disc PAL Region 2 set from the UK, but I haven't had a chance to look at the extras on the second disc yet. Will report after I've seen it...

Jim,
As I read these comments I am surprised that there isn't more commentary on the actual experience of watching The Descent. I sooo wish Roger Ebert would have gotten a chance to review this one because I am aware of his phobia of heights. He mentioned it in his reviews of Touching The Void and Open Water. In the review for Touching The Void he says, "For someone who fervently believes he will never climb a mountain, I spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about mountain-climbing. In my dreams my rope has come lose and I am falling, falling, and all the way down I am screaming: 'Stupid! You're so stupid! You climbed all the way up there just so you could fall back down!'" Just imagine then the nightmares that Roger would have after seeing The Descent! It was strange indeed to have a fear of heights evoked in a movie that takes place underground. As the characters are making the daring attempt to get from one side of a seemingly bottomless pit to the other, every second that goes by is caked with the fear that someone might fall to there certain death. As I put myself into their shoes I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach. I got this same feeling during the scenes where the women all crawl through the claustrophobic tunnels that lead to who knows where. What REALLY stood out to me is the way the the underground was strategically filmed to make us lose any sense of direction. There were moments where I wasn't sure which way was up or down or even sideways for that matter... there is no point of reference.. no center. Before the cannibals even showed up I was thouroughly scared, and I'd be willing to venture that Roger would have been traumatized by the first half of the movie. The feelings these scenes create are so strong and effective that I think any notion of "cliches" in the movie are pointless to focus on. Not many movies do as good a job of using the three-dimentional capabilities of film to th max. In his review of Open Water Roger Ebert said, "Rarely, but sometimes, a movie can have an actual physical effect on you. It gets under your defenses and sidesteps the 'it's only a movie' reflex and creates a visceral feeling that might as well be real." The Descent is one of those movies. For sure. Thanks for the recomendation Jim!

JE: Beautifully said, Justin. That sense of disorientation is key to how the movie works. As I said in my review, I think it's both about physical peril and psychological terror -- and it blends them seamlessly.

Jim,
I've finally figured out the movie! Please bear with me. The best way to look at it is through the lens of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America." This connection would have been impossible if not for the scene cut from the American version. Needless to say, "Once Upon a Time in America" was butchered beyond recognition upon its initial release.

In light of the treatment OUATIA got, it's not surprising that a similarly ambiguous ending was excised from "The Descent."

The true final scene serves the same purpose as the final shots of OUATIA. The cliche is true: everything (beyond a certain point) was indeed a dream. A "pipe dream" if you will. And wasn't Sarah one of the girls smoking a joint back at the cabin? We can probably chalk that up as mere coincidence.

The crucial point hinges on the transition from reality to dream. Coming in both films just after total disaster strikes, the pipe dream/ hallucination is a defense mechanism against what is too traumatic to confront honestly.

In OUATIA this moment would fall after Noodles's three best friends die in their attempted robbery of the Federal Reserve. Note that we never witness the event. We only see the aftermath through Noodles's eyes.

After betraying his friends to their doom, Noodles retreats to the opium den. In order to escape his guilty conscience, he gets stoned out of his head. In a drug-induced fog, Noodles forges in his own mind an alternate scenario that ultimately exonerates him of any culpability.

In "The Descent," we can see that Sarah is clearly hallucinating, probably in order to mitigate the trauma of her daughter's death upon her psyche. She clearly believes in her hallucinations, fleeing from the flickering lights and following the calls of her dead daughter. Seeing the pole fly through her head is surely terrifying, but as long as they allow her to believe her daughter is plausibly alive, Sarah's post-traumatic hallucinations also behave as somewhat of a defense function.

The defensive hallucinations really take flight when Sarah, like Noodles, betrays her friends to their deaths. Also like Noodles, her transition involves falling into or emerging from sleep. Since Sarah wakes up in the cut scene inside what appears to be the same room she found herself in after the first Crawler attack, we can safely say that this marks the transition from fantasy back to reality. The first change (from reality to fantasy) took place shortly before this.

If all Sarah's friends die at the hands of the Crawlers, it is also safe to conclude that the traumatic event from which Sarah seeks to clear herself of responsibility is the death of her friends. But how is she responsible for all her friends' deaths?

As you noted in your breakdown of the final scene, Sarah appears unnaturally contorted to resemble the Crawlers. This is probably the best visual clue as to what really happened. Sarah, likely in the same brutal fashion she dispatches the Crawlers, has killed all five of her friends. This implicit act is analogous Noodles's unseen tip off to the police about the bank robbery that kills his friends.

The Crawlers and their attack on the group are simply a mental construct (perhaps a hallucination, perhaps a dream). They shield Sarah from her guilt and trauma in the same way that Noodle's dream of the future guards him psychologically against what he as done.

Even in the case of Juno, Sarah merely cripples her. Sarah could argue to herself that it was not done wantonly, but rather out of concern for her own survival: in order to give either one the time necessary to escape, the other had to be sacrificed to the Crawlers. A twisted interpretation of morality perhaps, but of a sufficiently murky nature to veil a much more unambiguously sinister crime.

By the end, Sarah seems to have partially snapped back to reality, if only briefly. The unseen Crawlers begin to scream from the blackness. Does Sarah ultimately relapse into the nightmare world of the Crawlers, or is she able to admit to herself what she has done?

While we never see the reality of her crime, we can infer that it must have been at east equally (and probably a lot more) horrific than the world of the Crawlers. Paradoxically, by escaping from her own guilty conscience she ends up trapped in hell. And just as she is trapped inside the cave, there is likewise no way out of her suffering.

This is an interesting twist on OUATIA where Noodles ultimately finds a modicum of solace in his pipe dream.

Why does Sarah kill her friends to begin with? Did she exact revenge on Juno for having an affair with her husband and then kill the others to cover it up? Did she fly into a blind rage because it was her friends' idea that got her trapped in the cave? That is ultimately left to interpretation. However, you can be certain that the act itself was undoubtedly beyond gruesome, as reflected in her battle with the Crawlers.

Maybe the Crawlers are even a representation of Sarah's attempt to deal with turning to cannibalism and eating her friends as a last resort to survive.

The "Dream" Interpretation:

I agree with a far-less-than-literal interpretation of the movie, and here are some details that I feel support this interpretation.

1) THE DAUGHTER. Clearly the most surrealistic image in the movie, it appears sporadically during the entire cave adventure, including before the appearance of the creepers, if I'm not mistaken. And if I'm right about that, then the question arises of why the daughter appears before total madness has broken loose. And the natural answer would be that we're watching something less real than actual events.

2) CAVE ART. I don't know about anyone else, but didn't the cave painting seem out of place? In such a supernaturally hellish cave as this, who would take the time make a detailed cave painting? Obviously, the creepers didn't paint it. And prehistoric cavemen probably wouldn't have chosen such a complex and perilous cave system to inhabit. (That would also call into question when the creepers evolved, which must've been before there were cavemen, since the evolution required would presumably take many more generations than there were between the neanderthal and modern man.)

3) DIRECTIONAL ARROWS. The arrows that Juno discovers in the middle of the story are strange because she thought to use them to find an exit, but that would presume that someone had found a way out of the cave, and there was a clear early implication that nobody had. What was Juno thinking? Juno and Sarah appear to be following or looking for arrows on the walls in their final push forward together at the end; they clearly appeared to know where they were going. Are the arrows here, too? How and why would anyone put arrows here, presuming that they would've also encountered the creepers?

4) THE CREEPERS. These beasts are not played as supernatural, at least in the traditional sense. There's nothing mystical or magical about them. If they're otherworldly, then at least they're not extraterrestrial. We don't even know that they're mutants. They're just very special animals, part of our natural world. And that begs the question of how they got there, and especially of how man does not know of them. Just a moment of reflection on the mechanics of evolution should tell you how they could not have evolved. Additionally, how do these creatures sustain themselves? There can't be enough food down there, either natively or from wayward visitors like the girls. Life doesn't grow very well in caves, which is why pretty much all the known inhabitants of cave systems are comparatively small organisms.

5) THE AMERICAN ENDING. After watching the movie yesterday, I quickly decided that the most of the movie was a dream. I find the American ending impossible to take at face value because it feels so surrealistic: That Sarah just happened upon the exit without getting lost again (too lucky, even if it's "just a movie"), the iconic image of her climbing the mountain of bones toward her freedom (didn't that look so surrealistic?), that she emerges from a hillside despite having been "miles underground," the several minutes spent just watching her run and drive away (in a nightmare, you would just keep running after you think that you've escaped your horror, and a regular movie ending would've cut to the car without showing all of the running), and "ghost Juno" all add up to something that is simply divorced from reality, even the reality of the movie's world. Neil Marshall knew what he was doing, so at least in the UK he showed the "ending" to actually be a dream before plunging back into the darkness. That Marshall recut the ending for America suggests that he wanted his movie to be interpreted more as a dream than the original cut would allow, not just to deliver a last second "boo!"

6) THE ONLY SURVIVOR. According to the American cut, Sarah is the only survivor. Despite being an ensemble story most of the time, Sarah is positioned as the protagonist. Having a single protagonist provides a dramatic anchor, and having her be the only one survive reinforces the whole survival theme to hyperbolic heights, but the focus on Sarah at the beginning and ending also supports the dream interpretation. And in reality, the given protagonist doesn't even have to survive, as the British ending shows, not to mention Hitchcock's ingenious plot twist in Psycho. Thus, Sarah's singular survival in the American cut deserves a closer reading.

The "Dream" Interpretation (continued):

Here are a couple more points that I had forgotten to include:

7) MONSTER DESIGN. The scene where one of the characters explains the biological design of the creepers is incredibly cliche. But the explanation also stated the obvious and was very lacking in insight, didja notice? I do not agree with Andy Heck at all; as I've opined, the evolution behind the creatures could not work (Creationists would have a better argument here), and their physiology is lacking in imagination. They're cave animals, so of course they would be blind with big ears and pale skin. And how much thought is required to create a humanoid monster? The point is that if the monsters are so unimaginitive, then the dream interpretation makes more sense. Adults lose most of their imaginitive capacity from when they were children, so their dream demons would expectedly not be fantastic beasts but rather an amalgam of cliches.

8) NARROW PASSAGE. While the girls have a lunch break after their initial descent, Juno tells Sarah (if I'm not mistaken) to find their next path. She's the one who discovers the tunnel that's so narrow that it could barely fit a person, yet she's also the one who gets stuck, and she's the last one through the tunnel before it collapses. She therefore bears some responsibility for what happens to her friends, and her being stuck in such a claustrophic space has symbolic implications. Being the last one through the tunnel is a curious development: Traditionally in such scenes in countless other stories, the leader is the one who goes last to see that the others cross safely. In this story, Juno would be the leader. Yet, Sarah goes last -- unless the implication is that Sarah is in control on a level beyond the obvious. Her mind would have an interest in seeing everyone survive to face a greater terror -- the creepers. Nobody dies until the creepers make their appearance. Notice how the crossing order changes when the girls have to move across the huge pit: Sarah is almost the last person, but Juno is last and almost falls.

Okay, I think we can all assume at this point that everything in this thread will contain SPOILERS.

(The following assumes that the movie was NOT, for the most part, a dream.)

It was actually in the car on the way home when I talked about it with my friend, that we came to the conclusion that Sarah actually is given a few reasons to kill Juno--when she sees Ann, dying, it puts the idea in her head ("Don't trust her--she did this to me"), and in a way, Sarah could also blame Juno for having to kill Ann, as well.

Later, when Sarah sees Juno, it's after Juno has totally abandoned Rebecca, leaving her to the Crawlers. I think when Sarah asks Juno, "Did you see Rebecca die?" Sarah KNOWS that Juno's lying. And that's where she makes her decision--she knows that screaming will bring them on, and that they pretty much only focus on one person at a time (the one Crawler seems to more or less ignore her in an earlier scene, and the others are going for the easier meal), so the final idea of sacrificing Juno to make her a distraction is easier for her to make.

Also, oddly, I find the British cut to be more palatable because of this. In the American cut, Sarah's torture never ends, but in the British one, she does seem to either accept her fate or Elvis has completly left the building.

Also, regarding the UK cut, none of those birthday cake dreams make any sense without that ending--and what is it that her daughter is saying? Is it "We're waiting for you...?" It's something like that, I think--and again, it makes the idea of Sarah's doom a little bit easier to swallow.

As Bruce Campbell once said, there's good endings, there's bad endings, and there's appropriate endings. The UK cut I think is more appropriate.

I'm glad there is so much discussion going on about this film. Especially about the ending. For me, the film was a very well made horror film. It developed characters that I cared about and it kept the tension building and let it go just at the right moments. Sure, everything that happened was pretty cliche, but it was done in such a way that I didn't care and I was still glued to my seat.

The original ending is the one I prefer. I beleive that when Sarah cripples Juno and leaves her and then runs, this is what is really happening. When she falls down, hits her head, and then her eyes open, this is the dream.

She awakens from the dream and finds herself still in the cave where she fell, Juno dead behind her and the crawlers on their way.

Thats what I beleive, but it is very ambiguous, and I think the fact that we are all discussing this is why that ending is better.

**spoiler**

In the British ending, after Sara stabs Juno and leaves her to die at the fangs of the crawlers, she (Sarah) flees and falls down a deep, vertical fissure, where she lies inert on the ground before a bright light rouses her.

Not to stretch things too far, but I think at this point, Sarah is mortally injured and is undergoing a Near Death Experience. Except instead of being a good NDE that guides her to Heaven, it's a bad NDE that propels her along the lit-up pathway to Hell.

One last observation. In the ending sequence, when Sarah sees her daughter with the birthday cake, the cake has five candles. Then, when the shot swings back from Sarah's face, the cake now has six candles.

Continuity error?

I think not.

Again, not to stretch things too far, but I think the first shot of the five candles represents Sarah's five deceased friends, and when the sixth candle appears, it shows that Sarah has now herself died.

(Sarah's five friends haven't necessarily gone to to Hell themselves, as Sarah appears to have done, but they have all definitely transitioned to another place.)

I've a few comments on some viewer's reactions.

Firstly, I tend to take a litteral view on the existance of the crawlers. I admit this is a personal bias as

1) I would rather suffer the pains of a buddy cop or raod movie marathon than watch another "its was all a insanity / death dream" ending. In fact I think I'll just go into my own fugue state when I'm presented with such a cop out appeal to "intellegent writting."

2) I like monsters, sue me. Film, no matter how "real" is at the end of the day a fantastic medium. Sometimes I like a little fantasy with my fantasy, thank you very much.

I totally agree with John Swift focus on the birthday candles. The appearence of the sixth candle does seem to imply a transition. Its also of note that given the girls adventure trips were an annual event. So at the end of the latest adventure we have another birth/death day candle.

Just a note to Fei Meng concerning the directional arrows. I believe they were being followed in reverse with the idea being that a previous group (the one that had left their crimpalon in the cavern earlier) had been marking their approach forward. The theory seemed to be that the earlier group had come in through the second cave (as indicated in the cave painting) so following the arrows in reverse should lead to the start point. Mind you I think the metaphoric implications of Sarah following a reverse path in light of her going bat-shit crazy during the process is a pretty deft touch.

I loved the subverting of the character arcs of both Juno and Sarah. Clearly these two are going to be the last standing and in those moments issues will get "resolved." For them, anyway, for the audience, not so much. While there does seem to be an attachment to the idea of Sarah as "hero" of the piece its Juno that has more of classical heroic journy. She goes from callous, self-interest, unable to really deal with tragedy to selfless determination to save her last, true friend. Sarah on the other hand become more feral, venegence crazed and sadistic. Leading up to their final confrontation both have a "baptism" Juno in water, Sarah in blood. I think that says it all.

Also, was I the only one who thought that Peter wasn't the only "third corner" in the tragic love triangle? I really picked up a vibe that Sarah and Juno may have been more that just school chums. The depth of their relationship seemed so much more than with the others. There was a devotion and annimosity between them that I've only seen in ex-lovers. Note Sarah's obvious discomfort with Holly, Juno's self described "latest protogee."

Sarah is also a great subversion of the Sigorny Weaver trope from "Aliens." She certainly does face her fears and turn into a monster killing machine but its not out of some inner strength, she just gone high on bloodlust. Sarah morphes into Jason Vorhees more than Ripley. Especially vivid in her battle with the one female Crawler (also, the only Crawler that showes a visiable sense of loss at the death of her own kind) we see. This is no symbolic, maternal struggle. This is tooth and nail, animalistic war. Dir. Marshal pulls the same trick in his previous Dog Soldiers, especially with his Bill Paxton cypher, the blow hard soldier Spoon. Rather than the expected breakdown, Spoon absolutely comes into his own in the face of evil, and strangley becomes the films most sympathic character.

One thing I loved about The Descent is just how many takes it has generated, with any number of them validated by the text of the movie. Its great to see a movie, a full on Horror Movie, that works so well on a surface level that still has inspired some pretty interesting conversation. And not because of plot holes! It suits a film that is seen in small shafts of light against total blackness, where each character's perspective is limited to the bulb attachted to their forheads. They are all experiencing the same thing yet that experience is limited to this tunnel vision. Kind of like most of us, really.

Thanks,

Allan

Yessirree, Allan, I can't agree more that the crawlers are corporeal from the outset.

Since Neil Marshall has taken obvious pains to create a smart film, I can't see him undermining his effort by making the crawlers a dream-induced plot device.

That would be truly awful.

One other thought while I'm at it.

Ancient mythology is rife with epic depictions of goddesses descending to the underworld to confront Death. The goddess, Juno, wasn't one of them, I believe, but I still like the fact Marshall used the name in the film, since Juno is the great Roman goddess of marriage. Nice irony.

Something else about Juno:

One thing that's interesting about Juno and the movie's handling of her, is that from time to time, the movie seems to visually "sell" her as a hero (and the movie may also be "lying" to us in that regard).

After Juno accidently mortally wounds Ann--deliberately leaving her to die in a moment of weakness, when we see her again, she saves Rebecca's life. But look at how that's shown to us:

Juno not only gets the hero shot, but a heroic music sting!

What's brilliant about this is that we, as the audience, are still forming our opinions of her--we may already be making excuses for her mistakes and bad judgment. We actually, on some level WANT her to be the hero...

So when the confrontation between Juno and Sarah happens--as we know it must--we actually don't know how to feel. That's a very complex emotion for such a thrilling horror movie. A Hollywood verison of the same film would have made Juno bitchier, and made it clearer that Juno deserved to die that way--but the thing is, she doesn't. She's not a hero, she's just human, and she made mistakes.

And that's what makes that a great horror moment--the Crawlers (to refer to Ebert's review of the original "Dawn Of The Dead") are essentially blameless. It's not personal. They're only acting in their nature.

Sarah, on the other hand, makes a selfish and judgemental decision, and, though pragmatic, it's delivered in a personal way.

Also, on a total surface level, I love that it's a horror movie with a predominantly female cast, and there's not a two-dimensional screamer in the bunch.

One last note regarding the movie "lying" about Juno being a hero--has anyone else pointed out that in the walk up to the cave early in the movie, she puts on an Indiana Jones-type fedora?

Regarding the ending, the climactic Sarah/Juno confrontation fascinates me
for two reasons.

The script successfully circumvents the Talking Killer Syndrome,
as Mr. Ebert likes to call it.

And the actors are allowed to act.

I particularly enjoy the complex emotions the Medoza/Juno character conveys while she mutely faces the MacDonald/Sarah character, who stares her down with deadly, implacable intensity.

Happiness, gratitude, puzzlement, the sudden realization that Sarah knows, followed by guilt, a wordless appeal for mercy, then abject fear.

All of this packed into that brief, silent exchange.

Well done, Neil Marshall, for writing and directing such a scene.

Brilliantly handled.

(People complain this film has lousy acting? Come on now.)

Wow. Great discussion.

I just saw the film last night and was blown away. After watching the original ending this morning and reading all of the comments, I have become even more appreciative of this film.

I have to admit that I prefer the US cut more than the UK. I have to agree that the UK cut makes the film add up to the story being more of a dream/hallucination/descent into insanity and should not be taken literally. But what I really appreciate about having the two cuts is that the US cut, for me, has a completely different angle on the events of the film and is not just a different ending for no real reason. Both cuts of the film are completely valid and gave me two completely different views of the film.

I took the storyline of the US cut as an actual series of events with many layers of subtext about Sarah's character. Though I viewed the events as actually happening, I saw the film on the whole to be a metaphor for Sarah's rebirth/reawakening after dealing with a crippling loss. After a year of mourning, Sarah finally crawls out of her comatose state by taking back control of her life and removing herself from all aspects of her previous self (in this case, that is accomplished through the death of her friends, even though their deaths were not caused by her hand). Sarah would never be able to move on as long as she still had ties to her previous life.

I'm very surprised that no one has yet to mention that Sarah's emergence from the cave at the end of the film was reminiscent of childbirth. The parallel should be obvious to anyone who has ever witnessed the birth of a child (or any animal, really). Sarah was lost deep within her psyche for a year, unable to cope with the world. Her adventure in the cave has representative of her state of mind during her period of overwhelming grief and her eventual emergence back to the surface.

As for the ending, I thought it was a brilliant twist the director, not just a cheap tacked on ending to make the audience jump. I read the appearance of Juno much as the other posters here did: she was a ghost; a reminder to Sarah of her action (her sin) in the cave. Though Sarah has emerged from her comatose state, the haunting dreams of her daughter have been left behind only to be replace by dreams of Juno because she will never be able to escape the guilt of having killed her (or, at least condemning her to death). When I left the theatre I couldn't help but wonder how many people in the audience took that scene literally, as if Juno had actually survived and escaped the cave.

Brilliant movie. Big thanks to Jim for blogging about it. I may not have seen it otherwise. I look forward to reading more posts on the topic.

Jim, your references to Dante's Inferno intrigued me. I have never read the Divine Comedy but, like most people, am aware the general story and some of it's themes. I did the simple thing and read through Wikipedia's entry on The Divine Comedy this morning and found some interesting bits (that I could just be reading too much into, of course). Can't really give much insight since I don't really know the work for myself but still thought they were good conversation fodder for someone who might be more familiar with the actual work. This is all quoted from Wikipedia, which we all know has the highest amount of truthiness amongst reference materials, so take it with a grain.

Wikipedia's entry describes the moments before Dante's descent into Hell which seems to parallel Sarah's enterence into the portion of cave where all bad things will happen. In the film, Sarah get's stuck and has the tunnel collapse behind here. She passes out and when she wakes, the collapse has occurred and she is surrounded by her panicked friends.

From Wikipedia:
"Then Dante and Virgil reach the ferry that will take them across the river Acheron and to Hell proper. The ferry is piloted by Charon, who does not want to let Dante enter, for he is a living being. Their passage across is unknown since Virgil forces him to let them across, but Dante faints and does not awake until he is on the other side."

The final circle of Hell is reserved for the worst type of sinner: those who betrayed someone whom they had a special relationship with. Seems like Juno would fit this bill, and her death is the last in the film much like the ninth circle is the last in Hell before Dante ascends to the Mountain of Purgatory and eventually to Paradiso.

From Wikipedia:
"Ninth Circle. Traitors, distinguished from the "merely" fraudulent in that their acts involve betraying one in a special relationship to the betrayer, are frozen in a lake of ice known as Cocytus."

I came home right after seeing the film and watched your linked video of the original ending. What an improvement! If I didn't know better about American audiences who usually see this kind of film (namely teenage cliques), I'd be deeply offended at the loss of this poignant, and more emotionally satisfying, conclusion. Instead, we get a (relatively) cheap shock to cap things off with. Pfff!

Jason Haggstrom: "I'm very surprised that no one has yet to mention that Sarah's emergence from the cave at the end of the film was reminiscent of childbirth."

Oh, yeah. And there's a lot of birth imagery and symbolism in the film. Just off the top of my head:

...Crawling through that tiny cave.

...My roommate pointed out this one--What gets Sarah stuck in the cave is that she won't let go of the red rope bag--which she seems to hold to her stomach as she crawls through. I don't think where she holds the rope bag is a coincidence.

...The emergence from water, and from blood...

...Rebecca, as she's climbing across the chasm, seems to be doing Lamaze breathing...

...and, of course, the birthday cake.

I'm sure there's a lot more.

Allan McPherson: "Also, was I the only one who thought that Peter wasn't the only "third corner" in the tragic love triangle? I really picked up a vibe that Sarah and Juno may have been more that just school chums."

It seems as if Juno might be bisexual, at the very least.

Holly does seem to have something going with Beth, in an early scene, and for some reason they seem to want to hide it from Juno. (Plus, the way that Holly is referred to as Juno's "protégé" seemed to drip with irony--and Holly herself says that she's "sportf---ing both Beth and Juno," and the reaction from the group seems more surprized that she's actually saying it than whether or not it's true.

But were Sarah and Juno a couple? Unsure. If Juno's attracted to Sarah, that may have bled into the attraction to her husband.

What's great about that charatcer dynamic is that normally, the character drama and the horror storyline are kept separate in movies like this, and in this one, the personal drama actually dictates a good share of the conclusion.

And I agree with John Swift that the acting is a lot more subtle and complex than we usually see in movies like this. I think it's actually harder to hit those beats in a genre film. I hope we see more from this whole cast.

Jason, as you say above:

The UK cut makes the film add up to the story being more of a dream/hallucination/descent into insanity and should not be taken literally.

You know, after viewing the original ending a number of times now, one detail gives me pause to consider (reluctantly) that Sarah could possibly be experiencing one long protracted hallucination after all.

Here's the theory.

Just after Sarah cripples Juno and flees, she falls down the crevice and regains consciousness as a brilliant light bathes her face. Notice, however, that as she opens her eyes, there's a distinct, simultaneous CLICK, as if a switch is being turned nearby.

Now what is that sound, I wonder?

And where does it originate?

Perhaps the foley man is being sloppy with his sound effects?

Or maybe Sarah's unstable psyche is simply ejecting more mental detritus?

Or, maybe, and I admit this is major stretch, maybe she is actually still lying unconscious in hospital, her active brain filtering sounds from the hospital environment around her? Maybe a nurse has just turned on a light? Maybe a doctor has just clicked his ballpoint pen? Maybe--?

Layers within layers.

Did Neil Marshall incorporate all of this ambiguous detail into the story on purpose?

Or is it simply a fortuitous artifact of imaginative filmmaking?

I surely don't know.

Whatever the case, I find it damned fascinating.

(I'll say this, however. If a sequel is made and it opens with a bleary Sarah in hospital surrounded by her five still-alive friends, I'll be vastly disappointed.)

Personally, I like the British ending better. It's a little corny, perhaps, but I like the "descent- into madness" angle.
One minor quibble with this clip. (I haven't seen the whole movie yet, watched the region 2 dvd with a friend and wasn't paying attention the entire time!) What's up with Sarah popping that monster's eyes out? What difference would that make to a creature who lives in darkness? Would those things even have eyes? Wouldn't they be more likely to be completely sightless, like those little cave fishies?
I know, I know, it's just a movie! I'm a dork! But still, it's really bugging me...

In answer to rh...

Sarah pops the monster's eyes out because she's just raging pissing mad and it's pure spite. It would make no difference to the creature, which can't see anyway, but it sure would hurt. Those things would have eyes, only because they evolved, presumably, from humans, and the eyes haven't yet totally disappeared. Yeah, maybe in another few hundred thousand or a million years (however long these things take) they would lose their eyes completely.

I propose a sequel: Sarah returns with a crew of 5 more females, this time scientists and explorers, to uncover and study the monsters, but of course it goes horribly wrong and everyone except Sarah dies, and at the end, Sarah discovers herself where she was seen in the last scene of the UK version of the first movie! "I've been waiting for you," Sarah tells herself. Talk about ambiguous! It could be called "The Descent 2: There And Back Again".

Just kidding.

This movie is up there in the same rare air as The Shining, Alien, and Jaws. It will be a horror touchstone for the ages, not because it does anything particularly original (it doesn't), but because it does everything it intends to do and does it to the hilt, with no excuses, apologies, or winks to the camera. There is alot of discussion about the symbolism in the film (both intended and infered), and that in itself is an indication of the rare intelligence and sensitivity behind this film. Depressingly, a great majority of horror films concentrate their energy on the surface: the perfect skin of beautiful youths, the lingering close-up of disection and eviceration, the painstaking but sourceless blue backlight. No such preoccupations here. Beneath the stark, graphic visuals is a heavy personal subtext of real grief and loss, with the darkness and claustrophobia of the cave an inspired metaphor for the confusion and pain of the Sarah character. In grief, we describe ourselves as "lost", "in the dark", "trapped", "confused". We don't know which way is up. Here, that feeling is played out physically and viscerally. These spirited, fierce women (finely cast and sharply drawn) have intended to use the cave to draw Sarah out of her darkness, and instead are drawn into it. That Sarah is the last to "survive" may only be because she is the most prepared: she has lived in this place for the last year.
The film is uniquely anti-Hollywood horror. The pacing and rhythms, while adhering to horror convention, patiently linger on character and atmosphere. There is no dialogue when a telling look will do. The monsters aren't unleashed until about halfway thru. The status quo is not restored, the guilty are not punished, there are no one-liners or clever gags to cheer. After years of watching disposable young soft-soap stars pose their way through loud, empty rollercoaster rides, it's strange to see a horror movie that genuinely haunts and resonates. When things get bad here, they don't get scary like a rollercoaster. They get scary like real life: messy, sudden, without warning.
Unlike so many horror films, the motives of these characters are never in question. The women are well-intentioned: they believe together they can move beyond the pain in their lives. Even the fatal mistake of abandoning the guide book is borne of Junos misguided attempt to heal their group through staking new territory. But the pain these women go caving to escape must be confronted - and then some. That's why I find the British ending more intergral to the body of the film, and more potent. Sarah cannot escape the pain. She must confront it. In a strange way, having faced the cave and its admittedly gollem-like beasts, Sarah can now make peace with the pain of her daughters death. Hallucination or not, the image of her daughter no longer hurts Sarah. I love the bleak poetry of this ending. At the bottom of the world, on a pile of bones, Sarah confronts the specter of her birthday girl, and finds if not comfort, then acceptance.

Great conversation here. I saw the film last night (finally!), and am eagerly catching up on the discussion. I like that the ambiguity of the film allows for making it potentially literal (the monsters are real!) and potentially dreamt (the monsters are metaphor!). Frankly, I like it being a bit of both myself.

But one thing that I keep thinking, which may or may not be supported by the film itself, is that the action is real up until Sarah gets stuck and panics. It's only after then that Juno admits to leading them to the wrong cave. It's after that the monsters appear, and Juno kills and we find out her necklace is tied to Sarah's husband.

If everything after the collapse is not real, then Juno's villainy and adultery are Sarah's making, based on the implied events before her family's gruesome death. In this view, there are no bad actors per se, just Sarah's emotional turmoil to the events and her jealousies and unresolved tensions with Juno (which Juno, to her credit, attempts to address).

In this view, they might even be in the correct cave. Everything might be going according to plan, until the cave in -- it seemed odd to me that Juno would be so cavalier about going into unknown caves after being so adamant about proper technique elsewhere.

Whatever the truth (if there is an actual truth here, and not deliberate misdirection and ambiguity) this is one film I'd love to see taken apart frame-by-frame, like Roger did to Mulholland Drive.

I thought the Crawlers were a bit unrealistic. Mainly in the fact that they had lost their ability to see from living in the caverns for apparent millennia. What threw me was the idea that they went to the surface to hunt (apparently frequently, based on all the bones.) Since they were on the surface for a time, their sight wouldn't have evolved away; it would have been needed to coordinate hunting of large animals. Perhaps they would have developed an ability to see better in the dark and, would have preferred hunting at night on the surface, when many of their victims would be easier caught? Since the Crawlers were so vicious, perhaps they could have been driven underground by the original human inhabitants of that part of the Appalachians. The cave paintings could have shown humans chasing creatures into the cave to explain an important event or as a warning to future generations.

I liked both endings of the film--one leads to "she has descended into madness", and will be eaten by the crawlers or mayhap, she will replace "the mother of the Wendel" (anyone remember the 13th Warrior) or she has survived, but has descended into madness, guilt over abandoning Juno to her death--bait for the beasties in the dark . . . as for triangles I see Holly and Juno as a couple, but also see Sarah and Beth as a couple (or at least Beth a wannabe with Sarah), and yes, I think Juno and Sarah were a couple in the past, so Beth is Iago.

**SPOILERS, naturally**

Personally, I thought that "The Descent" was one of the best horror movies I've seen in years. I'm still of two minds as to whether the Crawlers were real, or Sarah's delusional justification for the events that transpired in the cave. In some way, I hope I never fully make up my mind.

The one thought that I want to write about is in regards to dustin's post:

"Even the fatal mistake of abandoning the guide book is borne of Junos misguided attempt to heal their group through staking new territory."

I think that Juno leaving the guide book behind was not a mistake. She knew that the cave they were going to enter was not in the book, and she wanted to prolong having to reveal her deception for as long as possible.

It's because of this, as well as the other details that come out about Juno - her alleged affair with Sarah's husband, her accidental, yet ultimately unapologetic killing of Ann - that I think of Juno as the villain, moreso than the Crawlers. After all, whose fault is it that they're in this particular cave in the first place?

Great discussion here. Just saw the film last night on DVD, and it had the British ending. I would have been very disappointed if the film did not have the final scene with Sarah still underground, hallucinating her daughter with the birthday cake.

Up until this morning, I was certain that the point at which Sarah begins dreaming occurs just after she cripples and leaves Juno. I considered the climb up the pile of bones, birth/escape into the countryside, and seeing Juno in the car next to her the only part of the expedition that was a dream, and thought that the dream begins when she passes out after leaving Juno behind. And then she wakes again to find herself still in the cave, hallucinating her daughter and still trying to survive among the crawlers. I thought the crawlers were real, and that all her friends' deaths happened as we saw them happen.

But as I've been reading this thread and thinking about the film, the one thing that makes me think the entire spelunking expedition could have been dream was the way the lights flicker in a dreamlike fashion while Sarah is running through the hospital corridors after first regaining consciousness following the car accident. While watching the film, I was thinking that that was a dream sequence, until she collapsed into the arms of her friend sobbing, at which point I thought it was real and the strange dreamlike lighting was just emphasizing the surreal nature of Sarah's realization that she had lost her family.

But now that I think about it, that strange run through the hospital corridor could easily have been the film-maker signaling the beginning of a dream/hallucination that never ends, right through the end of the film.

I think the way I ultimately prefer to see it is that the entire episode was real except that Sarah dreamed the escape/birth from the hillside while she was still actually trapped in the tunnels, the last survivor, completely insane. And that the whole spelunking expedition actually occurred as we saw it, but was a lovely metaphor for Sarah's internal turmoil following her horrific loss.

No matter how you slice it (no pun intended), this is a great, thought-provoking horror film. I think the best I've seen since 28 Days Later.

I find it interesting that many people while discussing whether or not the creatures were real don't bring up Sarah crawling like the Crawlers after she wakes up.To me this was written and directed for a specific reason.And the only plausible reason I can come up with is that Sarah was the Crawlers.I believe she went insane when she got stuck.If you look at all the events before she gets stuck,it seems like she is actually starting to deal with her daughter and husbnads death.She's even laughing and having a good time at one point.That is not the characteristics of someone who is still suffering major trauma.I believe when she gets stuck that it is too much for her mind to handle another traumatic experience.She is just beginning to deal with the death of her family and now this comes along and causes a major anxiety/panic/phobic attack which causes a psychotic break.So when she is released from being stuck,she is insane and goes on a killing spree and kills her friends,leaving Juno and her confrontation with her for last.After killing Juno,she falls into a deep sleep where she dreams of escaping the cave because she believes she is now at peace.But Juno's ghost makes her realize that she will never be at peace because she has now killed all her friends.This is representd by the five candles she sees on the cake.Then when she looks at the cake again,there are six candles because she realizes she is now also going to die in the cave(hence,the sound of the creatures coming for her)but she is at peace becuase she is going to be reunited with her daughter again.I believe all the dreams about her daughter throughout represent the fact that she will never get over her daughters death and so she knows the only peace of mind will come from dying and being reunited with her.This would also represent the other theory people have had about the whole thing being a dream from the hospital bed.That's why we hear the lightswitch at the end.But I also believe the light switch could represent the first time Sarah slipped away into blocking out reality when she couldn't deal with the realization of her daughters death.I don't think the ending represents Hell.Sarah was not an evil person.Even in a court of law,a person is found innocent of murder by plea of insanity.If Sarah was insane,she can't be held accountable for her friends deaths.She was not of sound mind.So I beleive she sees her daughter and the six candles at the end because she is finally going to die and be reunited with her daugther.She'll finally be at peace and the nightmare is over!Anyway,that's my take.As I said,I find the fact that Sarah crawls at the end like the Crawlers to have a very specific meaning.She crawls like them because she was them.There's no other way to interpret it.Anyway you look at it,the fact that this movie brings up so much interpretation and discussion makes it brilliant in my view! My thanks to Neil Marshall and the writers and everyone else involved for making an intelligent,thought provoking horror movie!