“The Descent” is one of the UK’s greatest horror films, fusing terrifying creatures with claustrophobic tension. The 2005 film sees a group of women go spelunking in a remote and extensive cave system in North Carolina. As the women become lost in the vast underground network of caves, they are attacked by carnivorous subterranean creatures that relentlessly hunt them. In the US cinematic finale, the sole survivor, Sarah (Shauna MacDonald), has a vision of Juno (Natalie Mendoza), the woman she left to die, before regaining consciousness.
The original UK version of “The Descent” and the unrated cut released on home video in America go further with Sarah’s hallucinations. Instead of coming to her senses safely outside the caves, Sarah suffers from a delusion within a delusion, still lost underground. Sarah has a subsequent hallucination, imagining herself reunited with her deceased daughter (Molly Kayll) as the monsters rapidly close in on her. The US ending was a modification requested by its American distributorLionsgate, to make the film less dark, with director Neil Marshall granting the request.
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