In Neil Marshall’s 2005 horror masterpiece, darkness emerges as a living organism. It shifts and lurks and claws its way into our nerves, under our skin, and eventually, inside our heads.

| Oct 31, 2024

... a film stripped to bloody basics, a ferocious and taut exercise in action horror that recalls early James Cameron, with more gore and less sentimentality.

| Aug 19, 2023

The Descent falls into a long line of horrors preying on the visceral fears of audiences, cleverly bringing these terrors to the surface in a film that is at times hard to watch and experience.

| Jul 29, 2023

Writer and director Neil Marshall brushes with several unique strokes in crafting a film that bucks many of the genre’s trends while never running away from what makes the genre great.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 20, 2022

There is blood and gore and visceral terror and unrelenting, heart-stopping suspense. In short, it’s one of the best horror films of this decade.

| May 25, 2022

There's a stifling sense of almost unbearable tension

| Jan 10, 2022

It's a grim tale that provides a 99 minute rush of blood to the head. Who knew claustrophobia could be fun? The Descent is horror done right.

| Nov 12, 2021

A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators. It's terrifying and I'll never watch it again as nerves couldn't handle it, but it is bloody brilliant.

| May 10, 2021

Quite simply, The Descent is one of the best horror movies of the last 20 years.

| Apr 14, 2021

While I think we should question the authority of the ubiquitous male writer-director to shape horror productions, I think Marshall does a good job representing his female characters.

| Jan 7, 2021

Marshall has crafted an incredibly tense and frightening masterpiece, bolstered by six powerful lead performances.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 30, 2020

The Descent is a phenomenal movie anyway, its women so brave, so dedicated to one another, so mistrusting or untrustworthy; its caves alternate between terrifying and beautiful...

| Nov 10, 2020

This punishing British-produced thriller knows how to do the fright thing without making any of the wrong moves we associate with standard-format hack-'em-ups.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 15, 2020

RECOMMENDED "Deliverance" with alpha-female spelunkers instead of macho men, set in caverns rather than on an endangered river, Neil Marshall's intense, bloody, emotionally viscid [movie] is a neatly elegant bite of malicious terror.

| Original Score: 9/10 | May 23, 2020

The movie unfolds in a satisfying slow-burn that makes you feel uneasy until it takes that anxiety and turns it into pure nightmare fuel by making your worst fears real.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 19, 2020

The best horror film since The Blair Witch Project.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 20, 2019

An all-female cast, a claustrophobic cave setting draped in red light, and an anarchic, vicious fight to the death...need I say more about one of the most physically taxing movies of the century?

| Aug 16, 2019

A smart, fresh and exhilarating genre movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 25, 2019

The Descent is already unusual for being a horror movie with an all-female cast, but it's even more unique for being the kind of movie that explores the damage caused by a friend's betrayal.

| Mar 8, 2018

Here is a movie so precise and cautious with its material that every moment, every suggestion or action, becomes an experience that involves us to alarming lengths.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 31, 2014