The Descent is a 2005 British horror film written and directed by Neil Marshall, in which six women who, having entered an unmapped cave system, become trapped and hunted by subterranean flesh-eating Morlock-esque humanoids.
The Descent rose over $57 million at the international box office, and received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Bloody Disgusting ranked the film third in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "One of the scariest films of this or any decade... Ultimately, The Descent is the purest kind of horror film – ruthless, unforgiving, showing no mercy."
The opening titles are edited to symbolise one of the main elements of the film; that is the six women can’t always see what’s going on due to the lack of light, which they resolve with their use of flashlights. To symbolise this in the titles, the titles have a “wipe” effect, where you can only see a few letters of the title at any one time, and there’s a flashlight-esque light source behind the words. This can be seen in the screenshot below.
The opening minutes are fairly innocent, with 3 women white-water rafting, having fun. The lighting is bright here which matches the harmonic non-diagetic sounds. However this calmness is broken when, on their way home in the car, they are involved in a collision which proves fatal for their daughter when she’s impaled by a long metal spike.
A year later, after the woman has overcome the initial heartbreak from the loss of her daughter, she goes on an expedition inside a cave system with 5 other women. As they are on their way in the car, typical horror music can be heard in the background of the clip as they drive through a darkened, overshadowed forest, this builds up suspense.
When they enter the cave system, there are several high-angle shots of the woman’s faces, to show their expressions of marvel and disbelief of the beauty of the cave system. Long non-diagetic notes are played to represent these feelings; however this serenity is broken when a crowd of bats fly out of a dark corner into one of the woman, accompanied by a high-pitched shreak from the woman which breaks the previous non-diagetic sounds. The shot here is handheld to show she was scared and to place us in the action.
When they begin to explore the cave system, the non-diagetic music is restored once again, long notes of a high pitch play over the woman descending into the cave. The lighting here is extremely low-key, the only light source being the torches on their hardhats. Quick cuts between handheld shots are used in conjunction with the amplified sound of the women breathing to build suspense once again.
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