The Descent: Between Promises and Genre

The Descent, a 2005 British film, directed by Neil Marshall, is a genuinely frightening experience.

The plot is simple, a group of women get trapped in an uncharted cave, and discover a group of cannibalistic underground monsters while looking for an exit. The main conceit of the movie, its claim to originality, is the fact that horror happens underground, in a constrained and dimly lit space. What could have been a gimmick quickly proves visually and thematically fruitful, as the choice produces a slew of effects which enrich the horror tropes. Thematically, the film is close to Deliverance – a comparison made by several reviewers at the time – in that it foregrounds the connection between the environment and the monsters it generates. Or to put it differently, the environment is the real monster of the fim. Indeed, the beginning of the cave’s exploration, which merely presents caving as a trip towards frighteningly regressive regions, is the most convincing part of the film. The opening sequence, during which the heroine’s family dies in a brutal car accident, establishes a narrative contract in which anything can happen, even the sudden death of a cute child. Together with copious foreshadowing regarding the dangers of cave exploration and – less efficiently – with copious startling false alarms, the narrative strategy calls our attention to the threat inherent to the sport.

A most disturbing and effective sequence involves the group of women crawling through a narrow corridor, which eventually collapses.
 

 
Marshall shows us all the women going through the narrow passage until the heroine, Sarah, panics and causes the tunnel to collapse. Repetition is key here, and the tension increases with each woman, precisely because nothing alarming happens. The device conveys the feeling that the cave is threatening not because of what could happen but because of its very existence. The continuous presence of the environment is in itself a source of danger, even while the violent discontinuities of the horror genre have not appeared yet. Besides, in this case, the apparently unmotivated repetition of similar actions – it is even hard to tell who is crawling through the tunnel at a specific time – has a faux-naturalistic quality which may recall the tactics of the popular “discovered footage” films, and their attempts to imbue horror with a highly codified form of realism (cf. David Bordwell’s recent and insightful comment on the form).

Formally, the cave-setting also has interesting consequences in that it frequently functions as a form of cache or mask, as vast areas in the frame are entirely black, maintaining an ambiguous spatial relations to the locus of action. This distinctive effect – a pre-modern cinematic device naturalized by the setting here – not only produces unusual images, but it also works to open potential spaces for horror, potential startles. Genre connoisseurs expect startle effects and are acutely aware of the need to observe dead spaces. In The Descent, this is countered by the impossibility to see though these spaces.
 

 
The end of the film suffers, from the fact that the tension between naturalized scary effects and identifiable genre conventions is abandoned in favor of an overt formula. Plausibility issues also interfere, as the blind monsters have developed an acute sense of hearing but apparently no sense of touch. Several close escapes thus appear artificial and disruptive to the narrative contract, even though they may be thrilling self-contained moments. A scene during which a monster walks on a motionless Sarah without noticing her presence is a striking example. The ending of the film is not without pleasures, but these are referential pleasures, tied to knowledge of the codes and the history of the genre, a pre-condition to appreciating the minor deviations on display. Will there be a final girl? Will our point of focalization turn out to be the heroine after all? The issues at stake towards the end of the film are far removed from any involvement with the characters. Still, the gorgeous photography sustains the film even in its weakest moments.

My viewing experience, however, was shaped long before this final inflection by the opening sequence of the film. There are several possibilities open to horror film-makers, but an usual gambit is to open with a quiet, lustful act, with hints of the horror to come included in the mix: the auto-stopper in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the explanatory text in Cloverfield,  the hints of madness in The Brood, the sport and shower scene in Carrie, etc. The Descent initially seems to adopt this strategy of introducing harmless scares before the actual monsters enter. The film opens with a rafting scene, fraught with tension and the suggestion that rocks or water could severely harm one of the female protagonists – a fitting introduction for the speleological horror expected by most viewers at this point – which ends in satisfied displays of camaraderie.

The thrill ends quickly, however, and Sarah, one of the girls, leaves a bit early to come home with her child and husband. This initially appears to be a bridging scene meant to accompany the credits, an introduction to a meaningful conversation or perhaps a naturalistic account of a change in location. The scene is a bit long, though, and after twenty seconds, you realize that the film is dedicating a portion of its running time to showing us an “intermediary space”, “un espace intermédaire”.
 

 
These empty places, in which you “leave the realm of the expected meanings” (Jean Cleber) are of course ubiquitous in our lives, but notably absent from the compressed narratives of mainstream cinema. You expect them in Duras’s films, but not in a fairly low-budget genre work. Foregrounding these spaces is the strategy used in Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers or Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, and it serves to establish these two films as flamboyantly non-generic. This is also what Nicolas Winding Refn used so effectively in Drive, but then, Drive is a film about style and film-making more than a genre exercise. The very logic of genre and commercial cinema dictates that scenes must have a narrative or thematic significance. For a fleeting moment, The Descent seems to forego that logic and open itself to a whole realm of possibilities. If a genre is a set of possibles, a specific “vraisemblance” meant to frame our expectations (Jonathan Culler) then this aimless conversation challenges our notion of genre.

Then comes the tell-tale shot:
 

 

It lasts for eight seconds, after a series of much more classical close shots on the three protagonists. The unusual camera placement calls our attention back to the presence of a photographer and a director. This is a shot with a narrative purpose: it suggests the need for Marshall to establish a coherent sense of space, the need to organize the scene and to provide it with a form of order. The shot does not in itself appear clearly teleological, but it suggests very strongly that something is at stake, that the fleetingness of the scene has to give way to a usable set-up.

Indeed, that set-up is used only a few seconds later, when a gruesome car accident kills both Sarah’s husband and child, reframing our expectations once more towards a shock-based filmmaking. When a slow-motion shot shows us a metal tube perforating the husband’s head, any trace of generic ambiguity is gone. Shock and gore erase the fleeting moment of uncertainty to reassert generic conventions. These remain somewhat blurred for a while in the film as the formal qualities of the cave environment threaten to take over the narrative imperatives of the genre, but they never truly go away.
 

 
For a brief moment, The Descent offers a tantalizing glimpse of another film, a possible naturalistic character study centered on a family in dangerous places. That way only remains open for a few seconds in the film, but it leaves a lasting impression. Its openness points to richness of possible narratives which suggest that the characters are not mere cannon fodders, that they are not entirely constrained by the fairly rigid boundaries of a horror-driven tale. Simultaneously, it asserts the film-maker will to knowingly work in the genre, having examined other possibilities only to discard them.

The scene therefore works not only as a repetition for later sequences, but also as a miniature of the film’s structure: openness and promises violently brought back to the specific pleasures offered by genre conventions. The Descent may not be the most accomplished horror film in the Western canon. It is a smart and efficient movie, which puts forward its affection for the conventions it puts to use. It may, however, lead us to regret the many ways not taken, and the promises they held.

16 thoughts on “The Descent: Between Promises and Genre

  1. There’s a traditional overlap, or at least nodding acquaintance, between exploitation and experimental/non-Hollywood/indie film isn’t there? Maybe it’s just having a lower budget in part. But Night of the Living Dead, for example, feels almost like theater — gore and character study both….

  2. Alex: I did mean hitchhiker. That’s embarrassing.

    Noah: You’re rigth, of course, there is indeed a considerable overlap between marginal genres and experimental cinema in general. I’m pretty sure Updike has Rabbit reminisce about watching European art films in the hope of seeing bare breasts, in one of his novels (Rabbit is Rich ?). There has also been some academic literature on the way Godard films were advertised alongside shock horror oddities in mail order advertisements.

    In the case of American gore/horror films, though (The Descent is British but is deliberately set in the american mold), it seems to me that the connection between high and low is historically located in a limited period, from the late 60s to the late 70s; from Romero to the early Cronenberg films, maybe.Still, in the blog entry I mentioned in the essay, David Bordwell points to the “discovered footage” films (Paranormal Activity of all things) as being close to experimental pieces, and since it’s unwise to disagree with Bordwell, I may be simply wrong about my chronology.

    Nevertheless, what I found fascinating in the Descent is not so much it’s avantgardiste elements as the fact that the film deliberately opts out of these possibilities to embrace the archetypal situations, tactics and images of the genre. Romero and Hooper embraced an avantgardiste aesthetic (born of financial constraints) as a way to tell more effective horror stories. Marshall, on the other hand, acknowledges the existence of different narrative strategies the better to ignore them – he temporarily renounces his constraints then embrace them again. Just as the women bury themselves in the cave, Marshall moves away from a certain generic openness toward a deeply referential treatment of his chosen register.

  3. I’d say found footage films are definitely influenced by/touching on/bleeding into experimental films in some ways. Or possibly just cannibalizing techniques, I guess…

    I like your point about turning away from other possibilities, and agree that that isn’t exactly what Romero or (for that matter) Cronenberg is doing. But rather than using experimental techniques in the service of horror, you could definitely see Romero or Cronenberg instead as using horror in the service of thematic exploration — or even of character drama in Romero’s case.

    Part of it too is the way that horror, and genre in general, are just more central in film canons than they are in other mediums (especially literature.) Not sure why that is (presumably historical)…but there’s a sense in which a horror film really could take something of a left turn and be less conventional and have that make sense/be meaningful in film in a way it might not in other contexts….

  4. I’m not so sure about Romero anymore. He did use horror for a variety of purposes, but he also did almost all his work within the genre. In the end, he seems not so much to be using horror but to work to expand the boundaries of the genre. If Survival of the Dead is any indication, he may also have stopped trying or even caring.

    As to the explanation for the central role of genres in cinema, I would argue that it has to do with a form of economic determinism, in addition to specific historical conditions. Since producing a movie is expensive, a whole strata of personal/experimental works simply do not materialize, while popular genres get produced more easily. The different financial thresholds skew the balance towards the formulaic.

  5. Nice.

    I was disappointed too when the monsters appeared. Why can’t I watch a bleak, claustrophic horror film that’s just about women trapped in a cave?

    (Incidentally, the film was notoriously given a happier ending for the US by cutting the Bierce Owl Creek bit at the end.)

    That Bordwell piece made me want to watch the Paranormal Activity sequels. Bordwell is the best. Jim Emerson also has some interesting discussion of the film, in posts and comments here

  6. The initial link worked for me, and it was indeed an interesting discussion.

    I was disappointed by the British ending, by the way. It simply did not carry enough weight to make me buy that the long escape sequence had been a dream. Plus, at this point, I was fully prepared for the most conventional of endings, the final girl driving into the woods and an abrupt cut.

  7. Nicolas, the economic component makes a lot of sense.

    Jones, if it’s just women trapped in a cave it’s a disaster movie. Different animal (and not a very commercial one in recent years, right?)

  8. “if it’s just women trapped in a cave it’s a disaster movie”

    Not sure I agree with this, although I think I see where you’re coming from. Given the recent conversation about defining “comics”, it should surprise you not at all that I don’t think it’s useful to try to define “horror movies”, but I have a pretty broad view of what films can be usefully considered as horror films. As in, two of my favourite horror films are Elephant (the Gus van Sant Colombine movie) and Irreversible (the Gaspar Noe exploitation/art movie–speaking of the crossover between avant-garde and horror!).

    For me, it’s most useful to think about horror in terms of emotional response — what kinds of emotions is the creator trying to evoke, and what kinds of emotions does the work actually evoke? And there’s a bunch of unpleasant emotions that sort of cluster together that I think the prototypical horror movies evoke…and so I think we can extend the notion to cover other movies which evoke the same cluster, even in the absence of overt generic elements of plot, character, setting, etc.

    So I think of “horror” as like “comedy”, best characterised in terms of how it makes us feel and not so much what it’s about. What makes a comedy a comedy is that it’s [supposed to be?] funny, not that it contains pratfalls, banana peels, record scratches in the trailer…and similarly for horror. I don’t pretend that this isn’t an idiosyncratic understanding of the genre — it totally is! — and I’d also allow that the genre can apply in the absence of said emotions– is Twilight a horror movie just by dint of having “vampires” and werewolves? Sure, why not? But thinking in terms of emotional response helps me understand what it is that I like about the prototypical horror films I like, and how I react to films that are like those films in certain respects.

    All of which is a roundabout way of saying that The Descent would too have been a horror movie even without the monsters, so there.

  9. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but the opposition you draw between genres that elicit a certain feelings and genre that contain certain elements overlaps with Rick Altman’s theory. Altman’s argues that genres are organised paradigmatically (a catalog of objects, characters and situations) and syntagmatically (situations, feelings, organisation), with specific genres emphasizing an axis more than the other.

    He readily admits this is a simplified notion, and in Film/Genre, he offers a more detailed approach, but it is a useful tool to reflect on the articulation between science fiction and horror, for instance (in Alien), or between horror and disaster movies. If we want to think of horror as a single genre, as opposed to a collection of loosely connected subgenres, then cohesion is certainly to be found at the syntagmatic level.

  10. Well, crap, that Bordwell piece actually has me interested in watching the Paranormal Activity sequels too. I wasn’t very impressed with the first one (it had a few decent scares, but the characters were pretty standard for found-footage, and I thought the typical “something attacks the camera, cut to black” ending was dumb), so I’ve resisted the sequels, but it sounds like they’ve done some interesting innovations and variations within the “rules” of the series, which could at least make for some consideration of the technical/editing choices, if the scary stuff doesn’t deliver.

    I kind of like the found-footage genre, although, like anything, it can range from interesting (The Last Exorcism, Trollhunter), to tiresome (Diary of the Dead). I really enjoyed Cloverfield; it took the typically low-budget, low-scale genre and added enough effects and large-scale stuff to bring some cool new ideas in, as well as good writing and acting. I haven’t seen Chronicle yet, but I’m interested. The one I definitely like is [REC], a Spanish horror series that’s a zombie story in the first installment, then adds weird supernatural/religious stuff in the second, and I’ve heard gets really over-the-top and goofy in the third.

  11. A fascinating and thought-provoking essay, Nicolas. Bravo!

    I particularly appreciate the feel of the writing, the way the critique moves around the subject and its facets, in a subtly unsettling fashion “reframing our expectations” of what it’s driving at, rather than hammering away linearly at a simplistic argument.

    ————————-
    Jones, one of the Jones boys says:

    …So I think of “horror” as like “comedy”, best characterised in terms of how it makes us feel and not so much what it’s about. What makes a comedy a comedy is that it’s [supposed to be?] funny, not that it contains pratfalls, banana peels, record scratches in the trailer…and similarly for horror. I don’t pretend that this isn’t an idiosyncratic understanding of the genre — it totally is! — and I’d also allow that the genre can apply in the absence of said emotions– is Twilight a horror movie just by dint of having “vampires” and werewolves? Sure, why not?
    ————————–

    A most reasonable and compelling argument! The brilliant Thomas Ligotti’s created exceedingly creepy “Corporate Horror” stories; one set in a drearily claustrophic office environment, where an enigmatic new manager is only seem as a blur through frosted glass, the phrasing and thought processes of the narrator…unsettling.

    (“As Ligotti depicts it, the modern workplace is an infernal realm where illogical demands are clues to an inscrutable malevolent scheme, and where terms like “reorganization,” “relocation” and “product” have sinister talismanic meaning…” http://www.amazon.com/Work-Not-Yet-Done-Corporate/dp/0965943372 )

    And similarly (as in Eddie Campbell’s argument that comics need not feature the Scott McCloud necessities to be “comics,” but simply cartoonish tropes), couldn’t a thoroughly non-frightening movie like George Hamilton’s delightful “Love at First Bite” be categorized as “horror” for featuring the array of vampiristic paraphernalia?

    Whoo! From Ligotti to “Love at First Bite”; I’m getting horror whiplash!

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