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"The Descent" -- what a great title. This British horror-thriller recalls grueling, adrenaline-pumping classics like " Deliverance ," " Jaws ," " Alien " and " Dead Calm ." It's that good. Finally, a scary movie with teeth, not just blood and entrails -- a savage and gripping piece of work that jangles your nerves without leaving your brain hanging. And so, for a change, you emerge feeling energized and exhilarated rather than enervated, or merely queasy.

Recently faddish torture-and-gore pictures zero in on anatomical violation at the expense more resonant archetypal terrors, those things that go bump in the long, dark night of the soul. Not so in "The Descent." The titular drop refers to a cave-diving expedition undertaken by six women, but it's also a breathless plummet into the abyss where nightmares are realized, a descent into primal chaos and madness.

Not that "The Descent" goes light on sensations of physical peril. Bodies are pushed, pulled, battered and stretched to the breaking point and beyond. The tight canals and cavernous cavities, sometimes illuminated by the light from pinkish-red flares, make it seem almost like a "Fantastic Voyage" into inner space, corporeal and psychological. These women are straining the limits of their muscles and bones, their friendships, and their core beliefs about who they are.

In an American studio picture (which, fortunately, "The Descent" is not), each of the women would be assigned one "problem" to work through, and one related personality characteristic to distinguish her from the others. I'm grateful that "The Descent" doesn't waste much time on obligatory schematic elements. It just takes the plunge -- damn the character development, full speed into the void.

Yes, there's a main character, Sarah ( Shauna Macdonald ), who has suffered a recent trauma and needs to be reborn if she's ever going to make it fully back into the world again. Beth ( Alex Reid ) is her nurturing friend, and Juno ( Natalie Mendoza -- giving off a distinct Michelle Rodriguez tough-girl vibe) is the unreliable, risk-taking member of the group who leads this expedition into subterranean Appalachia. (Insert "Dueling Banjos" theme here.) There's also a mother and daughter, and the girl's friend, a punkish daredevil who prefers phallic base-jumping to yonic cave-diving. That's about it.

Where the movie comes alive is in the dark, claustrophobic world under the surface, where the women soon discover there's no way out but through. Writer-director Neil Marshall (2002's "Dog Soldiers") uses recurring images of penetration (not just sexual, but lethal) above and below ground, looking through bullet holes in a road sign or shooting stalactites and stalagmites in ways that emphasize their potential as instruments of impalement.

He and cinematographer Sam McCurdy have a way with darkness, too; it can be oppressive (as when most of the screen is black, surrounding a small rock tunnel) or a terrifying emptiness, a vacuum to be filled by real or imagined dangers. These flawlessly orchestrated compositions make palpable an atmosphere of tension and dread.

Marshall knows his core audience well. He's studied many of their (and, no doubt, his) favorite movies, especially thriller classics of the 1970s, and liberally quotes from them -- remarkably, without throwing you out of his movie in the process. Part of the fun is in noticing these visual quotations when they pop up, and then seeing what "The Descent" does with them. They include explicit allusions (in addition to the movies already mentioned above) to " Picnic at Hanging Rock ," " Carrie ," “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ,”  " The Third Man ," "The Fourth Man," " Don't Look Now ," " The Blair Witch Project " " Vertigo ," " Apocalypse Now "... and plenty more.

"The Descent" works (and plays) not only with movie imagery, but with the stuff of myth and dreams as well. It evokes hellish visions, from famous paintings (Goya's Black Paintings, Fuseli's "The Nightmare") to gothic gargoyles and Dore's engravings for Dante's "Inferno." These almost subliminal references help drive "The Descent," and give it a powerful mythic energy. It grasps when and how to draw upon these images to create just the right tone of hallucinatory fear, and set it reverberating in your head. The movie's not pretentious or derivative, it's just uncanny about knowing what to borrow and how to use it.

One warning: Don't let anybody tell you anything about the movie before you see it. The ride is a lot more fun if you don't know where it's headed..

This is the fresh, exciting summer movie I've been wanting for months. Or for years, it seems.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Descent (2006)

Rated R for strong violence/gore and language

Shauna Macdonald as Sarah

Natalie Mendoza as Juno

Alex Reid as Beth

Saskia Mulder as Rebecca

MyAnna Buring as Sam

Nora-Jane Noone as Holly

Written and directed by

• Neil Marshall

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Movie Review

‘The Descent’: Six Women, a Dark Cave and Some Very Scary Monsters

By Manohla Dargis

• Aug. 4, 2006

The babes are buff and the scares bountiful in “The Descent,” a full-throttle horror freakout about six women on a caving expedition. This is the second feature from the British filmmaker Neil Marshall, who four years ago set loose a pack of protein-starved werewolves in “Dog Soldiers,” tossing in some explosions and novelty-shop entrails along the way. In the years since, Mr. Marshall has learned a couple of important lessons, notably that for sheer visceral impact, few images beat that of a woman slicked head to toe in blood — think “Carrie” — save for, of course, the image of that same woman unleashing unholy terror.

By the time Mr. Marshall tips his hat to that Brian De Palma classic (along with “Alien” and “Apocalypse Now,” among other touchstones), a few of the cavers have bitten the dust, or rather have been shredded to bits. As might be expected, there are monsters on the prowl in “The Descent,” and while they’re shriek-worthy, they aren’t the only things stirring up trouble. The women stir their share, as we discover when Mr. Marshall throws out his first big shock, which arrives with a surprisingly hard jolt in the first few minutes. Not long after, two friends, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and Beth (Alex Reid), are motoring toward an adventure that will find them crawling through tunnels and over somewhat trickier metaphoric ground.

Set deep in a remote pocket of the Appalachian Mountains (actually Scotland and some superbly tricked-out soundstages), the film hinges on the kind of extreme caving that marks the women as gutsy or reckless or maybe even insane, depending on how you view belly-crawling through passageways only slightly wider than your body. Because these six are exceedingly fit, though more in a cinematic than in an athletic sense, they can squeeze through breath-impedingly narrow spaces, a seeming advantage that soon works to their catastrophic disadvantage. If any of these women were packing serious muscle or an ounce of hip fat, this story would end dramatically differently. Then again, if any of these cavers also behaved like responsible outdoorswomen, this would play out like a Discovery Channel special, not a fantastical chiller.

It’s under a canopy of deep-woods green that Sarah and Beth meet up with the other cavers, their friends Juno (Natalie Mendoza), Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) and Sam (MyAnna Buring). Each is meant to come loaded with a distinguishing accent or visual marker, but outside of Ms. Mendoza, the only nonwhite cast member and one tough-looking hottie; the appealing Ms. Noone, who starred in “The Magdalene Sisters”; and Ms. Reid, who delivers the most credible performance, the women tend to blur. That’s true even of Sarah, who comes to the trip bearing weighty emotional baggage and is meant to serve as the point of empathetic entry, which she could be if Mr. Marshall had worked as hard on his characters as on his scare tactics.

After an evening of giggles and beer, and an uneasy new dawn, the women get down to the business at hand: they slap on their helmets and gear and lower themselves into a yawning cave. What follows is a sensationally entertaining escalation of frights, the kind that make you wiggle and squirm as you alternately laugh at your own gullibility and marvel at the filmmaker’s cunning and craft. And what is all the better, and indeed helps make “The Descent” one of the better horror entertainments of the last few years, is how Mr. Marshall, working with the resourceful cinematographer Sam McCurdy, messes with our heads long before the monsters do — simply by tapping into one of our most primitive fears, that of the dark.

With a nod to childhood, Mr. Marshall carves out an increasingly unsettling and claustrophobic shadow world principally by keeping the lights down. He also toys with color, interspersing the white beams from the women’s headlamps with washes of green and red from their glow-sticks and flares. The ingenious palette adds to the spooky beauty of the otherworldly setting, which, with its vaultlike chambers, wavy crawlways and spiky stalactites, takes on unmistakable sexual overtones, particularly as the women’s breathing becomes more labored, and their shirts grow clingy with sweat. Like Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, who runs around in “Alien” wearing a peekaboo shirt and panties, the women in “The Descent” are sexualized, though only up to that critical moment when being a girl takes a back seat to being a survivor.

If “The Descent” boils down to little more than the survival of the fittest (and nastiest), a Darwinian soap opera for the Just Do It generation, it is also indisputably and pleasurably nerve-jangling. The American edition comes with a nominally more upbeat ending than the British original, but it’s basically just kill or be killed, and with as much eyeball-gouging, neck-gnawing, head-bashing and outright fear-mongering as possible. The film has neither the aesthetic grandeur nor the mythic resonance of “Alien,” which stays in your body long after the goose bumps have retreated. But its B-movie minimalism is fairly irresistible, as are those swarming monsters that, designed to the director’s specifications, look like a cross between Iggy Pop and a bat. If that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is.

“The Descent” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). The film’s extreme gore seems a nibble away from an NC-17.

THE DESCENT

Opens today nationwide.

Written and directed by Neil Marshall; director of photography, Sam McCurdy; edited by Jon Harris; music by David Julyan; production designer, Simon Bowles; produced by Christian Colson; released by Lionsgate Films. Running time: 99 minutes.

WITH: Shauna Macdonald (Sarah), Natalie Mendoza (Juno), Alex Reid (Beth), Saskia Mulder (Rebecca), Nora-Jane Noone (Holly), MyAnna Buring (Sam), Oliver Milburn (Paul) and Molly Kayll (Jessica).

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The descent, common sense media reviewers.

A scary gorefest underground. Not for kids.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Some of the women courageously look out for each o

Brutal, grisly violence inflicted on and by women

Mostly unspoken tension concerning a husband who c

Plenty of f-words, increasing as the women go deep

Characters smoke a couple of cigarettes and drink

Parents need to know that the violence in the movie is visceral and bloody. A car accident puts spikes through a character's head (visible from the rear) and kills a child (off-screen). Once inside the very small-spaced cave, the women argue and show fear (in alarming scenes conveying subjective states). The…

Positive Messages

Some of the women courageously look out for each other; some are selfish, tricky, and fearful.

Violence & Scariness

Brutal, grisly violence inflicted on and by women cave-climbers: Images include dismembering, penetrations, crushed heads and chests.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Mostly unspoken tension concerning a husband who cheats on his wife with her best friend.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Plenty of f-words, increasing as the women go deeper into the cave, as well as other obscenities.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters smoke a couple of cigarettes and drink beers the night before the descent.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the violence in the movie is visceral and bloody. A car accident puts spikes through a character's head (visible from the rear) and kills a child (off-screen). Once inside the very small-spaced cave, the women argue and show fear (in alarming scenes conveying subjective states). The monsters are gruesome, both pasty and slimy, as well as vicious. Some characters lie to each other, but the reasons are more complicated than in most horror films. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (10)
• Kids say (35)

Based on 10 parent reviews

Refreshing in its storytelling although ultimately a gorfest

Claustrophobic horror masterpiece, what's the story.

In the beginning of THE DESCENT, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) is an athletic, good-natured wife, mom, and best friend to whitewater rafting buddies Juno (Natalie Mendoza) and Beth (Alex Reid). Within minutes, however, that life is over, as a car accident leaves Sarah alone and traumatized. A year later, Sarah's girlfriends convince her to join them cave-exploring in the Appalachian Mountains, to help her recover from her loss. The spelunking group includes spunky-punky Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) and goodhearted sisters Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) and Sam (MyAnna Buring). When a tunnel cave-in blocks their way out and Sarah seems to be haunted by her daughter's voice, the group begins to worry; things get worse when they're confronted by monsters deep in the darkness. Soon, the adventurers are fighting for their lives against "crawlers," blind, gnarly creatures with fearsome teeth and very bendable backbones.

Is It Any Good?

Equal parts yucky, scary, and delirious, The Descent is also clever about its limits, and chilling in its effects. It sets up a specific emotional situation for its protagonist, then turns it inside out, with the help of especially daunting monsters. Suddenly, Sarah can no longer be focused only on her own despair, but must face the worst external threats imaginable.

While the plot is straightforward and eventually predictable -- women in a terrible place get scared, get assaulted in terrible ways, and get tough -- the film is also about trust and betrayal, as well as surprising sources of strength. Exaggerating the usual horror movie gambit, the movie invites you to reconsider genre-based expectations. Sarah finds in herself an unexpected ferocity and an almost frightening determination to endure. What's smart about the movie is that it makes her survival costly. While she's relieved to be alive, she's also horrified by her own change.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the sense of loss embodied by Sarah, whose family dies in a car crash before the main action. How are the women's friendships tested by their increasing horrific circumstances? They could also talk about the popularity of horror movies: Why do we love to be scared? Does this one break any new ground in the genre?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 4, 2006
• On DVD or streaming : December 26, 2006
• Cast : Alex Reid , Natalie Mendoza , Shauna Macdonald
• Director : Neil Marshall
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 99 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong violence/gore and language
• Last updated : April 27, 2024

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The Descent Ending Explained: Can You Climb Out Of That Pit?

"Six women go spelunking" doesn't necessarily read as a great logline for a horror movie, but Neil Marshall's "The Descent" takes that premise and crafts an unforgettable exercise in terror. As the saying goes, it's a B-movie with A+ filmmaking.

Being trapped underground combines two common fears, confinement and darkness, and in "The Descent," the heavy shadows only reinforce the claustrophobia. Marshall and his cinematographer Sam McCurdy chose to light the film's sets (a facsimile of a real cave system built and shot at Pinewood Studios) primarily with the characters' flashlights. Even color choices — some frames are filtered entirely red or green — are used diegetically from those lights or flares.

As the characters get deeper and deeper into the cave, darkness subsumes each and every frame. It needs to, for the whole reason a cave is a scary setting is because of what you can't see. And yet, Marshall never loses track of his characters in the shadows, and if you're paying attention, neither will you. Where does this journey into hell end, though?

What you need to remember about the plot of The Descent

To understand how "The Descent" ends , we must start at the real inciting incident of the movie. Not our leads entering the cave, no. Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) loses her husband Paul (Oliver Milburn) and her daughter Jessica (Molly Kayll) in a car crash. Marshall shoots a pipe crashing through the windshield from Jessica's POV, thus we see it impaling her father's face head from behind before it keeps barreling towards the camera, and us.

One year later, Sarah's estranged pal Juno (Natalie Mendoza) arranges the caving trip to bring their friend group of adrenaline junkies back together. Important addendum: Juno and Paul were having an affair, and this trip is Juno trying to face the combined guilt of that and abandoning Sarah while she was mourning.

Since this is a horror movie, the bonding of our leads — Sarah, Juno, Beth (Alex Reid), Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), Sam (MyAnna Buring), and Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) — is cut short by a cave-in. It turns out Juno brought them to an uncharted cave system, not the tourist trap they discussed, to spice up the adventure. As they dig deeper in hopes of finding an alternate exit, they discover why this cave remains undisturbed. It's home to "Crawlers," feral flesh-eaters who look like Nosferatu Neanderthals.

The group is splintered and picked off one by one, but Sarah and Juno become bonafide Crawler killers. Unfortunately, while fighting a Crawler, Juno accidentally strikes Beth with her pickaxe; a horrified Juno runs off, but not before Beth grabs her necklace (holding a pendant from Paul, inscribed with "Love Each Day.") Sarah then finds the dying Beth, who tells her not to trust Juno (sealing the deal by showing her the pendant) and asks for a mercy killing.

Juno and Sarah, the last two left, both see themselves as murderers.

What happened at the end of The Descent

After fighting off another pack of Crawlers together, Sarah and Juno lock eyes in a standoff, the former holding her pickaxe up in her right hand. Sarah lets the pendant fall, revealing to Juno that she's aware of her sins, then impales Juno's leg with the axe and runs off. Juno pulls the axe out of her leg and prepares for a last stand. The camera pulls out to show about a dozen Crawlers advancing on her, then cuts away to Sarah, who hears Juno's screams.

Sarah trips and falls down a shaft, but when she comes to, daylight shines on her face. She climbs out of the cavern and reaches the surface. Still hysterical, she runs back to the car that she and the others came in and drives off, making it back to a public road and pulling over. Taking a moment to cry and vomit, she spots a ghostly Juno sitting in the passenger seat and screams.

Then she awakens, still in the cave. Her escape was just a dream, so she retreats into another one — seeing Jessica and sharing a candlelit cake for the birthday her daughter never got to have. The camera pulls back to reveal Jessica isn't there and Sarah is staring at nothing (the cake's candles are really the flame of her torch). As the shot gets wider, it's clear Sarah is nowhere near the surface and the Crawlers' shrieks are getting closer.

The film goes to the credits, initially played over the group photo the characters took, now no longer a memento but instead a final marker of their fate.

What the end of The Descent means

The "all just a dream" fake-out ending feels like a sucker punch , but it's really part of a pattern. When Sarah awakens at the hospital in the film's opening, she imagines it's empty and starts running down the hall until Beth grabs her and snaps her back to reality (a heavy green filter gives way to more naturalistic colors to signify the shift). Sarah was trying to run away from the tragedy that befell her.

At the cabin, Sarah has another jump scare dream when she imagines a pipe crashing through a window and crushing her face. She also imagines Jessica three prior times throughout the movie (the first two have the birthday cake motif, while the third has a jump scare where Jessica turns around and reveals a Crawler's face).

It should also be remembered that the title of "The Descent" has many meanings. As Marshall has explained , "What it is about is descent into madness and physical descent into the depths of the Earth." When Sarah falls into a pool of blood left over from the Crawlers' victims, it's like her baptism into insanity. As for her leaving Juno behind, there might be a pragmatic reason (leave her to distract the Crawlers so Sarah can escape), but she also just wants her to suffer.

This physical and mental descent is what makes the ending such a cruel twist. There's a wide shot of Sarah crawling up the tunnel of darkness towards a light shining at the end. This ascent is not just her getting out of the cave, but potentially the pit she's been in for a year. In the end, however, getting over her pain was a fantasy. All she has is her daughter's memory, so she'll cling to it in the brief time she has left.

Was it all in Sarah's head?

Since the movie is about Sarah's descent into madness, a common fan theory is that she imagined much more than just her daughter and her escape. This theory suggests the Crawlers were never real and it was the increasingly violent Sarah who murdered all of the others.

At the cabin, before the group leaves, Sarah is taking medication of some sort. Her falling off her meds and suffering a hallucination in the caves could make some sense. Likewise, when Sarah first spots a Crawler, the others say it's her mind playing tricks on her. And of course, Sarah proves throughout the movie she isn't in stable condition and, when pushed, can be violent.

However, this theory has never really held up for me; "The Descent" is simply too objective a movie that even a shared hallucination doesn't quite work with what's shown onscreen. For instance, the other characters see Crawlers when Sarah is not around. A pair of them kills Holly and then Juno fights them off to protect her body (leading to the tragic accident with Beth). Rebecca and Sam are shown alone in several scenes trying to evade the Crawlers. When Juno comes to their rescue and kills one (Sam spitting on its corpse), she insists they find Sarah. How does Sarah as the killer square with scenes where the characters are fighting off more than one Crawler, too?

Plus, the caves include physical signs of the Crawlers, their past victims, and previous explorers; the Crawlers have a bloody nest filled with human and animal corpses, while the leads also come across rusty climbing gear and cave paintings.

Sarah as the real killer is one of those ending theories that only sounds clever if you don't think about it too deeply.

What have the cast and crew of The Descent said about the ending?

Marshall offered extensive thoughts on the ending in a 2021 interview with  Vulture , both on his creative process and the in-text meanings. For instance, he confirmed that in the original ending, Sarah is doomed. "She's either going to starve to death or fall off a cliff or get attacked by a crawler. But she's with her daughter. That's what mattered most to her."

Shauna Macdonald gave her interpretation in a 2005 interview with eatmybrains.com :

"I think it's great to say to the audience, 'Actually, now you have to make up your own minds. We've told the story, now you decide for yourself what happens.' But the way it was in the script was like, 'There's no way out.' That's how I interpreted it when I read it, but when you see it there's more than [one] way to interpret it."

Describing Sarah's choice to kill Juno instead of confronting her, Marshall told Vulture:

"The characters don't have an opportunity to sit down and have a chat about [Juno's actions]. [... Sarah's] like, 'Once I see her again, it's not time for words.' It was show don't tell. Showing her the necklace meant she knew about the husband and about Beth. It was like, 'Ah, okay.'"

In the same interview, Marshall says the Crawlers are "cavemen who stayed in the cave [...] they've evolved to live there instead of in houses, like the rest of us." This fits with the cave paintings and the Crawlers hunting by sound (they've evolved past sight since they live in the dark). He added that while he wrote the film with the mindset that the Crawlers were real, he and his team "interjected all of these teasers and hidden meanings" during editing to suggest the "Sarah is imagining things" interpretation.

The Descent's alternate ending

After its initial run in the U.K. in 2005, "The Descent" was picked up for U.S. distribution the following year by Lionsgate. They asked Marshall for a different ending; while he didn't agree that American audiences needed a softer ending, he agreed in exchange for a 3,000 theater-wide release.

The U.S. cut of "The Descent" ends on the shot of Sarah seeing Juno in the car and screaming, without the scene of Sarah awakening in the cave. In this version, she does escape, at least in the most literal sense.

Now let's dig into Juno appearing in the car. In the U.K. ending, it's a sign that this whole sequence is a dream, but what about the U.S. ending? No, she didn't somehow escape the Crawlers to take revenge on Sarah, nor is it a literal ghost. Rather, the shot represents how Sarah will continue to be traumatized by what's happened to her and what she did. Even if Sarah makes it back to the surface, Juno will be "haunting" her metaphorically.

Even though I prefer the original ending, this alternate version isn't a total desecration of the movie's themes and intent. There's the same sucker punch where Sarah seems to make it back to the light of day, only for the reality of her situation to kick in. Marshall concurs, telling Vulture : "It was literally, they clipped 30 seconds off the end. It makes a difference, but it wasn't rewriting the whole movie. So I could live with it."

A Hollywood ending?

In the aforementioned Vulture interview, Marshall said he actually considers the U.S. ending to be the bleaker of the two. The U.K. ending is happier, "Not for us, but for her [...] She loses her mind, but she finds her daughter. That brings her a degree of happiness, which she's not gonna get if she escapes from the cave." In the U.S. ending, on the other hand, "She survives, but she's clearly out of her mind with fear and madness. So I don't see it as being a happy ending at all, having her get out of the cave."

Indeed, take note of Sarah's reactions in the different endings. In the original, she looks satisfied (Marshall directed Macdonald to show, "A glint — not of a smile, but of happiness in her eye that she was with her daughter again"). In the U.S. cut, the film ends with her screaming.

The two endings of "The Descent" have only increased discussion about the movie and its fame, which for Marshall is a win:

"It does seem to be quite a conversation point. But at the end of the day, people are talking about the movie still, which isn't a bad thing. If people want to analyze the endings, that just adds to the overall analysis of the movie, and I welcome that. I love it. I think it's fascinating: 'Which one's the bleak ending, which one's not?'"

What the ending of The Descent meant for the franchise

"The Descent" was a success ( bringing in $57 million at the box office ), so distributor Pathé made a sequel over Marshall's objections. "The Descent Part 2," directed by the first film's editor Jon Harris, was released in 2009. By necessity, it carries on from the U.S. ending because Sarah (Shauna Macdonald again) has escaped the cave. During the film, the now amnesiac Sarah and a rescue team have to go back in to find her friends, where they meet the Crawlers and the somehow still alive Juno.

Speaking to  SciFiNow  in 2009, Macdonald said that if there were to be a "The Descent Part 3," then she "would like to see the story continued above ground." However, the sequel turned out quite middling, and no such film ever emerged.

Marshall was quite candid about his dislike for "The Descent Part 2" to Vulture : "I originally tried to guide it a bit, but most of my advice was ignored, so I was like, forget it." His pitch was that Sarah would go back into the caves to rescue a child abducted by the Crawlers, a more compelling motivation than amnesia for sure.

However, Marshall doesn't think the sequel "take[s] away from the first movie." I for one can testify that whenever I watch "The Descent," my thought isn't, "I want to see what happens next.'" Why disrupt a knockout punch of an ending by asking for more?

The Descent (2005) Movie Explained

Neil Marshall’s ‘The Descent’ is a brutally relentless horror movie that feels like a relic from a bygone era, given the excessively internalized style of horror movies, with their repeatedly emphasized focus on trauma, that are a dime a dozen these days. A film like it could easily have veered into exploitation territory. However, Marshall fleshes his characters out enough and doesn’t engage in gratuitous violence (it’s still extremely gory!) to make the characters simply seem like sustenance for the monsters.

A mixture of ‘ The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ‘ and John Boorman’s ‘Deliverance,’ it follows six young girls out on an adventure to reunite and rehabilitate that eventually becomes the complete opposite of that. The gnarly creature designs and the slow build-up to a horrifying scene of carnage combine to create a disturbing horror experience, but one in which the human tragedy resonates far more after the credits roll than the sheer flesh and blood of it.

The Descent Plot Summary

Sarah, Beth, and Juno are friends who share a love for adventure and thrill-seeking sports. When the movie begins, the three are out rafting along the rapids somewhere in Scotland. Sarah’s husband, Paul, and daughter, Jessica, are watching and cheering her on. After their activity is over, Beth notices a certain friction between Juno and Paul. On the way back to the hotel, an absent-minded Paul causes an accident with a vehicle carrying steel rods that pierce through the windshield, killing him and Jessica. Sarah survives with some minor injuries and is utterly devastated at the loss of her family, as are her two friends.

A year later, Sarah and Beth go to the Appalachian Mountains on an adventure trip. It’s Sarah who wants this trip as a means of restoring some semblance of normalcy to their friendship. They meet up with Juno at a lodge where they’re staying, along with their mutual friends Rebecca and her younger sister, Sam. Juno has brought with her her protégé, Holly, a cocky young woman who loves jumping from tall heights. Juno has planned the trip. The following morning, they’re all to undertake a spelunking expedition to the nearby Boreham Caves. The friends all chat and catch up on each other’s lives as they prepare to resume the life they’d left behind as a group following Sarah’s tragedy.

Recommended: The Others (2001) Horror Movie Ending, Explained

The next day, the six begin their quest. Something is off from the get-go as Juno deliberately leaves the guidebook behind. The depth of the caves seems too much, given how touristy the appeal of Boreham Caves is. They dive in nonetheless, and soon, things start to fall apart. The spaces inside the caves are incredibly cramped, there are no clear routes, and where they find themselves is too deep underground for this whole undertaking to seem even remotely safe.

Juno admits to having lied to them about going to Boreham Caverns. Instead, it’s an unnamed and previously unexplored cave system, different from the ones they were meant to go into. The group is enraged at Juno’s ego trip, but she claims that it was meant to uphold their own ethos of risk-taking and not playing it safe. The danger everyone is in is quickly heightened by their discovery of animal and then human skeletons. Alongside that, they stumble upon extremely old hiking equipment left behind by previous explorers. Perhaps, it belongs to the adventure-seekers who discovered the place but have not lived to tell the tale about the strange creatures that roam this netherworld.

What are the creatures or monsters in The Descent?

The creatures the group runs into are cavemen who have lived in those caverns for millennia. The prehistoric paintings on the walls that the women discovered, similar to the Paleolithic paintings on the walls of Chauvet and Lascaux, prove that these creatures were akin to human beings in the early stages. But because of living in the darkness of the caves, they evolved into subterranean humanoids, who have a resemblance to human beings physically but are entirely feral otherwise. Their pallid skin indicates that they have never been exposed to sunlight, and their pointy ears indicate that they operate entirely on the basis of sound.

They’re completely blind but also fully equipped biologically to live in the dark. They’re expert climbers who can move about all over the uneven topography of the caves as if they’re all flat surfaces. Moreover, these creatures are entirely carnivorous and survive on the flesh of animals and humans, unfortunate enough to have made their way into this realm. The girls’ hypothesis is that they leave the caves to hunt for their food, which they then bring down into the caverns to eat. This has to be a nocturnal activity on their part as these creatures are highly averse to heat or light and, in all possibility, cannot go outside (if they do so) during the day.

The Descent (2005) Ending, Explained

What does sarah discover about juno.

After getting separated from Juno, Rebecca, and Sam, Sarah comes across a fatally injured Beth. She tells her how Juno is the one who mortally injured her. She doesn’t realize that what Juno did was entirely a reaction to having fought the creatures, and Juno thought that Beth was one of them when she snuck up on her quietly. While Juno was recovering from her shock, Beth tore off the necklace that Juno was wearing. It’s this necklace that Beth hands over to Sarah as a way of proving that she’s untrustworthy. The locket of the necklace has the words ‘Love each day’ on it, something Paul used to say, as Sarah had informed us earlier in the film.

At the beginning of the film, when Paul leaves with Sarah, Juno’s pained eyes at the sight of him leaving and Beth’s suspicion was meant to clue us into the fact that Sarah was the only person who was completely unaware of her husband having an extramarital affair with Juno. The necklace was a gift from Paul to Juno. When Sarah meets Juno towards the end and learns that Rebecca and Sam are dead, she assumes that Juno sacrificed them to save herself. So she decides to do the same to her by plunging the pick ax into her leg so that she can escape while the creatures’ attention is drawn towards her.

Given that Juno had an affair with Paul, killed Beth (accidentally), and was the only survivor of her group in the cavern, it provides enough reason for Sarah to believe that she’s a diabolical two-faced individual who only cares for herself and is hence, not someone she should feel guilty about leaving behind.

What is interesting to note here is that Juno is the Roman goddess of love and marriage. The film creates this irony by showing that the character named after her essentially ruined a marriage (Paul was ‘distant’ during the drive, after having met Juno, and in all probability, had something to say to Sarah that he was mulling over, which is where his recklessness caused the accident) and that in the end, became her undoing.

Also, Read: Thirteen Lives (2022): Movie Review, Themes Analyzed & Ending Explained

Does sarah make it out alive.

The movie ends in the US theatrical release after Sarah makes it out of the cave, having accidentally found her way out. In the original release in the UK, though, the ending was a little extended. After having escaped in the SUV, they are brought to the quest; the noise of the passing truck wakes her up from her hallucination as she sees a ghostly Juno sitting next to her in the car. The entire episode of the escape becomes a dream that Sarah had after having run away from Juno while lying inside the caverns. She hallucinates that her daughter Jessica is in front of her, about to cut into her birthday cake.

This visual leitmotif is peppered throughout the film and is meant to be a harbinger of doom. It’s a visualization of the survivor’s guilt she feels, given that her daughter died just days before her birthday. This is what Sarah dreams while she’s in the hospital after the accident, just before finding out that Paul and Jessica are dead.

Another instance where Sarah has this dream is right after she’s been saved by Beth from the disintegrating cave. In the end, the image bookends the incredibly sad year of Sarah’s life as we learn that the glow from the cake’s candle is actually the torch she’d been using till then. She’s still stuck underground in the cave, where there’s no escape possible while the creatures make their way to kill and eat her.  Sarah, therefore, doesn’t make her way out of the cave though the sequel will have something else to say.

Also, Read – 10 Great Movies from Bad Directors You Must Check Out

You can watch & stream The Descent on Prime Video and HULU

External Links for The Descent: Letterboxd & IMDb

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Shahim aims to be associated with films in some capacity all his life. To him, Welles, Cassevetes, Tarkovsky and Haneke embody why cinema is the greatest of all art forms.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Descent’ on Paramount+, A Dive into Cave Horror That’s Still a Scream

Where to stream:.

• The Descent

New Shows & Movies To Watch This Weekend: Prime Video's 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' + More

The 23 best horror movies of the 21st century (so far), new shows & movies to watch this weekend: 'the witcher' season 3 + more, stream it or skip it: 'the descent' on paramount+, a dive into cave horror that’s still a scream.

Take the plunge with Neil Marshall’s The Descent , now streaming on Paramount+ . This cave-set horror film became something of a cult hit in the mid-2000s as it unnerved the audiences who immersed themselves in its maelstrom of sound and light on the big screen. But even reduced to a smaller screen at home or on the go, this movie is still a standout in the genre because it’s rooted in the fundamentals of good moviemaking: craftsmanship and characterization.

THE DESCENT : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: After a whitewater rafting expedition leaves Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) on an adventure high, life brings her crashing to a low point when her husband and daughter die in a tragic auto accident that she survives. Still reeling a year later, she reunites with friends in an attempt to close the distance that has grown between them. Their spelunking journey takes them literally into a cave but also into themselves, especially when the group leader Juno (Natalie Mendoza) reveals that she’s taken them into unknown and potentially unsafe territory. As they try to make their escape through mysterious terrain, they find that they are not just fighting nature and each other – but the cave harbors a petrifying species of golem-like creatures they come to call “crawlers.” In order to survive, confrontation with all these elements becomes a necessity.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: A group of friends/collaborators who come together in a remote location and find themselves battling off a supernatural force that breaks their bonds? The John Carpenter energy – think The Thing — is strong with this one. ( The Evil Dead also comes to mind.) The emotional stakes of a woman battling the grief of a lost child while also dealing with the cruel twists of Murphy’s Law in an unforgiving terrain also make The Descent feel like a subterranean version of Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity .

Performance Worth Watching: Neil Marshall conducts quite the ensemble in The Descent , but it’s Shauna Macdonald who stands out among the cast. She’s given the emotional heavy lifting of transfiguring the trauma of her lost family into the shocking experiences in the cave. Without her grounding the increasingly wild events in familiar fears and feelings, the entire film could have gone off the rails.

Memorable Dialogue: “This is not caving, this is an EGO TRIP,” yells one of the women as they realize the mess they’re in. As usual in a horror flick, the danger comes from someone’s hubris in assuming they can outwit nature and skirt the rules in place for good reason.

Sex and Skin: The cave creatures are unclothed if that’s your kind of thing? In all seriousness, the only thing you’ll see piercing the skin in The Descent is a bone protruding from a bloody leg.

Our Take: Neil Marshall mines the abject terror of being in an unfamiliar environment where the rules can change at any minute with brutal effectiveness. It’s an all-out gorefest with terrifying jump scares and potent visuals, yes, but The Descent is also comfortable wielding silence and stillness as powerful weapons of fear. He further destabilizes the audience with aesthetic variations of light, color, and image source. Marshall finds terrors in the texture, plunging the viewer into the same state of confusion and volatility as the characters.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Over a decade and a half after its original release, The Descent is still an enormously efficient source of screams, scares, and scintillation. Neil Marshall knows there are no shortcuts to the terrifying result he wants to achieve, and he earns every moment.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, Little White Lies and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about  Spring Breakers.

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Screen Rant

The descent: part 2 review.

Is The Descent: Part 2 a worthy successor to the critically acclaimed and well-regarded Neil Marshall horror? Read on to find out...

If you've been reading Screen Rant for any amount of time, you're probably aware that I'm a HUGE fan of Neil Marshall's modern horror masterpiece, The Descent , from back in 2005 (although for some reason it didn't hit U.S. theaters until Fall 2006). To me, it was the most effective horror film I'd seen in years, and my personal favorite since The Shining (it featured at number 1 on my list of the "Top 5 Movies That Scared the Hell Out of Me" ).

It was also a film that I felt wrapped itself up very well, and in no way needed a sequel. But of course whenever a low-budget horror such as it is successful, either critically or financially, you just know they're going to go the sequel route. Needless to say, I was more than a little annoyed at the news of The Descent: Part 2 being made, particularly because Marshall, the first film's writer and director, wasn't coming back to perform the same duties for the second one, only attaching himself to the project on the executive producer level (which we all know is just to get the film noticed more/give it more credibility).

Picking up literally right after Marshall left off is the first film's editor, Jon Harris, making his directorial debut. The results unfortunately are way below the level of the first film and it's immediately obvious this isn't a seasoned director behind the camera. The film is often clumsy, particularly when the action - which there is a fair amount of compared to the first - is happening on-screen. There's two major elements that the first one had that are nowhere to be seen in this one, but I'll get to those soon.

(Warning: There will be spoilers in terms of what happened in the first Descent, and also possible mild spoilers for this sequel)

Firstly, let's get the plot out of the way: As I said, Harris picks up right where Marshall left us all in the last one, with the one remaining member of the cave diving group, Sarah, having escaped the seemingly endless caves (we'll get to how that may or may not make sense, depending on what version you saw). She is obviously delirious and is picked up by police and sent to hospital.

Unfortunately for Sarah, everyone else outside of the caves only have the information to go on that six women went down into the caves but only one came out, and needless to say Sarah becomes a suspect to the local law enforcement. They finally come to the conclusion that they need to go down to the caves to look for the rest of her party of women, taking Sarah with them as both their "guide" and to keep an eye on her as a suspect. So why does Sarah agree to go back down there, where she faced hell just hours previously? Well, she obviously loses her memory of everything that happened (typical...) and so doesn't refuse as you'd logically expect.

So with the help of a local man who discovered Sarah panicked on the side of the road, there's magically another way down to the caves other than where the group of women first entered - a shaft that leads down to some mines that are directly adjacent to the caves. With a new team, including an extra-suspicious police sheriff, Sarah must relive the nightmare she and her friends experienced.

The first of the two elements that helped make The Descent so great was the claustrophobic feeling of the cave setting. For more than half of the first movie we don't even encounter any of the monsters that the film ends up plagued with, but rather are forced to sit through almost unbearable fear of the darkness and the close proximity of the caves around the women. The tight spaces and endless darkness creeped the hell out of me the first time around, but the new director here just isn't able to capture the same kind of dread without resorting to blood and gore.

Speaking of which, there are bucket loads of more blood this time around. Don't get me wrong, plenty was spilled in a host of nasty ways in the first, but for some odd reason it felt... justified. Here, a lot of the time it's just gratuitous and bloodily violent for no reason than just to have it in there. Harris' inexperience as a director (although he's plenty experienced as an editor) really shows during the scenes of attack from the Crawlers (as the monsters/creatures are known) when the camera is shaky. The film then falls back on hacking away at a skull or arm (take your pick from all body parts) in an attempt to get scares. It, at least for me, rarely worked as intended.

That's not to say there isn't some genuinely effective scares to be found here: there were about 3 or 4 times where I legitimately jumped in my seat, mostly down to one of the monsters appearing out of nowhere, accompanied by a loud piece of music. A lot of the time it's obvious when the jumps are coming, but there were a few times when it worked quite well.

The second element of the first film that is squandered here is the more general fact that it was an all female cast, something that you don't often see in movies these days, particularly horrors. However, here they add at least a couple of guys to the fold, and although they're just as "ripe for the picking" as a couple of the other new female characters, I felt it took away a lot, if not all , of the magic of the whole thing in terms of the character dynamics.

To quickly get to whether or not the continuing of the story makes sense or not - that will depend entirely on what version you saw. In the UK, the first film ended with Sarah getting out of the cave only for that to be revealed to be a dream and she's in fact still down there, getting surrounded by the Crawlers. But the sequel chooses to COMPLETELY ignore that (not even a mention or hint anywhere as far as I could see) and go with the U.S. ending that she did escape in the end. Of course, it was necessary to do that in order to continue the franchise but for someone who saw the UK ending, it's just confusing.

Lastly, I just want to mention the ending of the film: Of course, I'm not going to give anything away, but suffice it to say that I found the ending to be ridiculous, nonsensical, annoyingly ambiguous (read: get ready for The Decent: Part 3 ) and that it took away from the overall story of both movies. You may have a different reaction should you choose to see it, but for me it really didn't work.

Overall The Descent: Part 2 is a major step down from the first film in almost every area, from the amount of scares (a whole truck load in the first to just a handful here) to the effectiveness of the gore and even down to such things as the dialogue (which is sometimes eye-rollingly cheesy) and the predictable characters (suspicious sheriff, naive young officer, eager adventurers and so on). If you liked the first one you'll maybe get a kick out of seeing the Crawlers doing more of their vicious attacking but generally I'd say skip this one and just go rent the original.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Descent: Part 2

Refusing to believe her story about cave-dwelling monsters, the sole survivor of a spelunking exploration gone horribly wrong is forced to follow the authorities back into the caves where so... Read all Refusing to believe her story about cave-dwelling monsters, the sole survivor of a spelunking exploration gone horribly wrong is forced to follow the authorities back into the caves where something awaits. Refusing to believe her story about cave-dwelling monsters, the sole survivor of a spelunking exploration gone horribly wrong is forced to follow the authorities back into the caves where something awaits.

• James McCarthy
• James Watkins
• Michael J. Reynolds
• Shauna Macdonald
• Jessika Williams
• 252 User reviews
• 129 Critic reviews

• Sarah Carter
• (as Shauna MacDonald)

• Susanne Small

• (as Joshua Dallas)

• Dr. Roger Payne

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The original cast from the first movie returned to film for the video camera shots featured in this sequel. Executive producer Neil Marshall , who was the director of the first movie, wanted to flesh out the recording that Holly had made on her camera (in the first movie).
• Goofs This film is set in 2005, right after the first one. At 1 hour, 2 minutes, Rios records her video message to her daughter on a Nokia N81 phone, which wasn't released until 2007.

Greg : Could piggyback on the elevator cables.

Ed Oswald : You planning to go down there, why not go down in style?

Greg : What, this old shit still works?

Ed Oswald : Sonny, let me tell you, this old shit-bucket will be working long time after that MP3 of yours.

• Crazy credits While in the first film the opening credits resembled a flashlight passing over and illuminating them, in this one, the opening credits appears as if a passing light were shining past them onto the audience.
• Connections Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Horror Movies Ruined by Terrible Endings! (2017)

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• Mar 9, 2010
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• October 14, 2009 (France)
• United Kingdom
• Official Blog (France)
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• The De2cent
• Bourne Wood, Farnham, Surrey, England, UK (on location)
• Celador Films
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• Runtime 1 hour 34 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Den of Geek

The Descent: Part 2 review

Can The Descent Part 2 measure up to the first film? And can the people who were sat behind Duncan shut up next time?

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Firstly, I need to disclose something. On the day I saw The Descent: Part 2 I was in a foul mood. It had been one of those days that started badly and ended the same way. I was tired, frustrated and angry with work, which was then compounded by a packed train into central London and cold, rainy weather.

However, there’s nothing like a bit of horror to cheer me up so I continued on, took my place at the screening and made sure to sit near the front to ensure no one blocked my view (also limited by the fact the cinema was packed), settling  in to try and relax for the first time that day.

This wasn’t to be.

The film started and luck dictated that the girl sat behind me had decided to bring three friends, one of whom decided to spend the entire film giving his own commentary, spouting clichéd macho bullshit like he was Oscar Wilde, jeering at other people for quietly enjoying the film, “Quiet people crack me up, innit!”, while adding such witticisms as “I’d do her in the cave!”. When the film ended, he and his friend, in their charming, wannabe gangsta way also had this conversation:

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“Ah, man the message of that movie is be quiet and you live…”

“Yeah, but what if a woman was being raped?”

“Dat is bad, bruv!”

Excellent work – nonsensical, threatening and offensive. Well done you stupid, selfish, rude little shits. Anyway, it does have its relevance in the review and it’s only fair to state the above in the name of honesty, as we’ve probably all had films ruined by an inconsiderate person/people at some point in our cinema going years and it can impact on the enjoyment of a film massively. With that in mind, I’ll focus on the movie and try and do my job…

The main problem that Descent 2 suffers from is in its comparison to the first film. The night before the screening, I re-watched the first Descent for only the second time since its cinematic release, coming to the late realisation that it was utterly superb, and far more affecting than I had remembered, being masterfully shot and acted, while remaining intensely scary and claustrophobic throughout.

Journalists have a tendency to use clichéd hyperbole on a regular basis to sell films, but The Descent really is one of the best horror films I’ve seen in the last decade, I think it was just slightly overshadowed on release by my existing love of Dog Soldiers .

The DVD of The Descent also features a DTS soundtrack, which, if you’ve never experienced before, makes all the difference and by rights should be compulsory on all horror and action discs, relevant because the key to some of the scares in the first film were down to some fantastic sound design and loud shocks.

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Unfortunately for The Descent: Part 2, the loud jumps that did come weren’t strong enough to shake me in any way, as, for the most part (like so much of the film), they were fairly well sign posted.

Even the fool behind me took great part in shouting out what was going to happen next and if he could predict most of the events, then most of us won’t fail to do the same and that’s not a good sign.

D2 is a sequel in the truest sense, being more Americanised, less subtle, cruder and a lot gorier. Luckily for me, that’s not always a bad thing in a horror sequel and, for the most part, the film was more fun than it had any right to be.

Some of the action set pieces were exhilarating in their brutality, with the tongue in cheek style of the film being, surely, the only way to go, as trying to match the original Descent in tone would prove impossible when the premise, revelations and creatures have already been revealed.

The addition of a toilet scene was a step too far, though, and gave other, less impressed, writers an immediate chance to start bandying the term ‘shit’ around in a spiteful way.

D2 continues on its problematic journey by (literally, at one point) hanging on to scenes and aspects from the first film, so some scenes were almost farcical in their playing. This did appear to be intentional as far as I could tell, but meant the film became confused at times as to what it was trying to be. (Some scenes, it should be noted, are exactly the same as the first, even replaying footage from the original as a set up.)

There was no time to really bond with the characters, including a gun toting sheriff from the Brian Dennehy School of Law Enforcement, who makes decisions that irritate in all kinds of contrived ways. But while most of the performances were strong, some of the dialogue had the audience in fits of unintentional laugher. When one character is asked what the creatures are, the reply is, “They’re death.” Not good.

I always try to be loyal to horror sequels and I found myself really wanting Descent 2 to be better than it was, as, for every step it took towards being great, it was hindered by such lazy contrivances as having Shauna Macdonald’s character, Sarah, suffer from a convenient bout of amnesia before being thrown back down into the caves before she can even get dressed, to the awful end which could’ve been taken from just about every bad horror flick I’ve seen in the last few years.

The excellent Shauna Macdonald really has no room to breathe (no pun intended), with no chance to show the incredible range she did in the first film. This should’ve been her chance to return to face her fears as Ripley did in Aliens , but the script just can’t quite deliver the gravitas or originality needed to work on different emotional levels.

You can see D2 attempt to follow in Aliens’ footsteps at times, but they’re clumsily done. Here we have experienced climbers, two cops and Sarah, yet the exposition is clumsy, the characters less sympathetic and the locations mostly familiar. Mostly.

Giving a character a child does not automatically equal characterisation, nor does adding a quick reference to a previous event, and the uniqueness of the bonding experience from the first film is gone, as is the very real British feeling which made The Descent a more intimate experience for me.

It’s a real shame that The Descent: Part 2 happened to be a follow up to such a superb film, as, in its own right, it managed to be thoroughly enjoyable when it hit its gory high points (any horror film with a drill gets points from me) and the blood does gush throughout the movie. But the two films are intrinsically linked and that can’t be ignored.

Before seeing Descent 2 I thought it was a brave move to make a direct sequel, but after watching it I wish it had fully embraced its schlocky influence and been a completely separate movie.

It’s fun, but in no way clever and a second viewing won’t change its weaknesses.

[ We’ve left a star rating off, given the ‘audience issues’ we had while watching the film. ]

Duncan Bowles | @duncanbowles

Han Solo, Pierce Brosnan and Ryan Reynolds quipping Warm Lohan feelings when Indy is whipping All 19 versions of Lord of the Rings These are a…

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The Descent: Part 2

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Watch The Descent: Part 2 with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Fandango at Home, or buy on Fandango at Home.

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The Descent 2 goes spelunking for its predecessors' unnerving power but never digs beyond surface chills, although this efficient splatterfest contains enough nasty set pieces to sate the gore-prone.

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Murderous May: 10 New Horror Movies You Don’t Want to Miss in May 2024

The return of a fan favorite franchise, the critically acclaimed new movie from a modern day genre visionary, and a slasher from the perspective of the Jason Voorhees-like killer.

It’s all headed our way in the coming weeks. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg…

Here’s all the new horror releasing in theaters and at home in May 2024 !

For daily reminders about new horror releases, be sure to follow @HorrorCalendar.

I SAW THE TV GLOW – MAY 3 (LIMITED), MAY 17 (WIDE)

Fresh off the haunting and singularly creepy indie We’re All Going to the World’s Fair ,  Jane Schoenbrun  is back with  A24 ‘s  I Saw the TV Glow , releasing only in theaters  May 3 .

In I Saw the TV Glow, “Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.”

Meagan Navarro wrote in her  Sundance review for BD , “ I Saw the TV Glow  offers a layered and authentic portrait of identity, wrapped in ’90s nostalgia and surreal imagery that embeds itself deep into your psyche.” Meagan continues, “Schoenbrun delivers a singular vision of arthouse horror that entrances for its fevered dream style and insanely cool imagery.”

Justice Smith  ( Jurassic World Dominion ) and  Brigette Lundy-Paine  ( Bill & Ted Face the Music ,  Bombshell ) lead the cast of the upcoming horror movie.

SOMETHING IN THE WATER – MAY 3

Samuel Goldwyn Films is bringing director Hayley Easton Street’s shark attack movie  Something in the Water  to select theaters and VOD outlets at home on  May 3 .

In the upcoming aquatic horror movie, “An idyllic destination wedding turns into a battle for survival. The film follows Meg ( Hiftu Quasem ,  Ten Percent ), who tentatively attends the wedding of old friend Lizzie ( Lauren Lyle ,  Outlander ) in the Caribbean along with fellow pals Cam ( Nicole Rieko Setsuko ,  Eavesdropping ) and Ruth ( Ellouise Shakespeare-Hart ,  One Four Three ), plus her former partner Kayla ( Natalie Mitson ,  The Larkins ) who she parted ways with after both survived a deeply traumatic event.”

Naturally, the wedding party is invaded by hungry sharks and all hell breaks loose.

TAROT – MAY 3

Originally titled  Horrorscope , Screen Gems is getting set to unleash  Tarot   in theaters on May 3 , which has been rated PG-13 for “horror violence, terror and bloody images.”

When a group of friends recklessly violates the sacred rule of Tarot readings – never use someone else’s deck – they unknowingly unleash an unspeakable evil trapped within the cursed cards in the upcoming Screen Gems horror movie  Tarot . One by one, they come face to face with fate and end up in a race against death to escape the future foretold in their readings.

Artist  Trevor Henderson  designed the eight monsters for this movie!

Larsen Thompson, Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Avantika  and  Jacob Batalon star.  Tarot  is written and directed by  Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg .

NEW LIFE – MAY 3

From the producers of  Something in the Dirt  and  The Mortuary Collection  comes  New Life , a tense thriller of apocalyptic proportions coming to theaters and On Demand May 3 .

The feature debut by writer/director  John Rosman  stars  Sonya Walger  (“For All Mankind,” “Lost”),  Hayley Erin  (“Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists”), and  Tony Amendola  ( Annabelle ,  The Curse of La Llorona ).

New Life  follows “a mysterious woman on the run (Hayley Erin) and the resourceful fixer assigned to bring her in (Sonya Walger). As their two stories inexorably link, the stakes of their pursuit rise to apocalyptic proportions.”

FOUNDERS DAY – MAY 7

After being released exclusively in movie theaters this past January, the tricentennial-themed slasher movie  Founders Day is headed home on May 7 courtesy of Dark Sky Films.

In this “bold political slasher” from the  Bloomquist Brothers , a small town is shaken by a series of ominous killings in the days leading up to a heated mayoral election.

As accusations fly and the threat of a masked killer darkens every street corner, the residents must race to uncover the truth before fear consumes the town.

Erik Bloomquist  directed  Founders Day , written by Erik and  Carson Bloomquist .

Devin Druid  ( 13 Reasons Why ),  Emilia McCarthy  ( SkyMed ),  Amy Hargreaves  ( 13 Reasons Why ),  Catherine Curtin  ( Stranger Things ),  William Russ  ( Boy Meets World ),  Naomi Grace  ( NCIS ),  Olivia Nikkanen  ( The Society ),  Jayce Bartok  ( When They See Us ),  Andrew Stewart Jones  ( Gotham ),  Tyler James White  ( The Villains of Valley View ),  Erik Bloomquist  (Weekenders ),  Adam Weppler  ( Long Lost ),  Kate Edmonds  ( The Third Saturday in October ),  Dylan Slade , and  Arun Cameron Storrs  star.

MIND BODY SPIRIT – MAY 7

A yoga influencer discovers just how flexible fear can be in  Mind Body Spirit , a new found footage horror movie that  Welcome Villain Films is bringing to Digital on May 7 .

Matt Donato raved in his  4-star review , “ Mind Body Spirit  is a knockout horror session for the livestream era, which has me desperately waiting to see what its creators and stars do next.”

In  Mind Body Spirit , “Anya, an aspiring yoga influencer, embarks on a ritual practice left behind by her estranged grandmother. She documents the practice on her YouTube channel for the world to watch, allowing her audience intimate access to her journey.

“But what starts as a spiritual self-help guide evolves into something much more sinister. As Anya becomes obsessed with the mysterious power of the practice, she unwittingly unleashes an otherworldly entity that begins to take control of her life – and her videos. Now Anya must race to unlock the truth, before her descent into madness threatens to consume her mind, body and spirit. By the time she reveals the true nature of the ritual, will it be too late?”

Mind Body Spirit  was written and directed by  Alex Henes & Matthew Merenda .

The upcoming horror film stars  Sarah J. Bartholomew ,  Madi Bready ,  KJ Flahive ,  Anna Knigge , and  Kristi Noory , and was produced by  Dan Asma  and  Jesse McClung .

THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 1 – MAY 17

The first film in a new reboot trilogy from director Renny Harlin  ( A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Master, Deep Blue Sea ), The Strangers: Chapter 1 hits theaters on May 17 .

Madelaine Petsch  (“Riverdale”),  Froy Gutierrez  ( Hocus Pocus 2 ),  Rachel Shenton  ( The Silent Child ),  Ema Horvath  (“Rings of Power”) and  Gabe Basso  ( Hillbilly Elegy ) star.

Based on the original 2008 cult horror franchise, the project features Petsch, who drives cross-country with her longtime boyfriend (Gutierrez) to begin a new life in the Pacific Northwest. When their car breaks down in Venus, Oregon, they’re forced to spend the night in a secluded Airbnb, where they are terrorized from dusk till dawn by three masked strangers.

Here’s the full official synopsis: “After their car breaks down in an eerie small town, a young couple are forced to spend the night in a remote cabin. Panic ensues as they are terrorized by three masked strangers who strike with no mercy and seemingly no motive .”

Renny Harlin ( Cliffhanger ,  Deep Blue Sea ,  Die Hard 2 ) is directing from a script by  Alan R. Cohen  and  Alan Freedland  ( The Freak Brothers ,  Due Date ). Lionsgate will distribute worldwide.

NIGHTWATCH: DEMONS ARE FOREVER – MAY 17

Shudder  is bringing the 1994 Danish thriller  Nightwatch and its just-announced surprise sequel Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever to their streaming service on Friday, May 17 .

The sequel was written/directed by  Nightwatch ‘s creator,  Ole Bornedal . Original cast members  Kim Bodnia  and  Ulf Pilgaard , along with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau , are back.

Here’s the official synopsis: “22-year-old medical student Emma ( Fanny Leander Bornedal ) has just taken a job as the night watch in the same forensic department where her parents were once almost killed by the famed psychopathic police inspector Wörmer. The events led to her mother’s suicide, and her father Martin (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has turned to tranquilizers to suppress the memories. Determined to investigate what exactly happened to them, Emma tracks down and confronts Wörmer, only to unintentionally reawaken his bloodthirst and ignite a violent revenge on everyone who sealed his destiny years ago.”

PANDEMONIUM – MAY 28

Director  Quarxx  ( All the Gods in the Sky ) explores the peculiar, welcoming all those hungry for wonder in  Pandemonium , a unique cinematic blend of fantasy, drama, genre, and humor.

Pandemonium  will be released on Blu-ray in the  UK May 27  and the  US & Canada May 28.  It will also be streaming on ARROW in the UK/US/CA/IRE from May 27.

Arrow Video  previews, “ Pandemonium  takes the viewer on a chilling journey as three interconnected stories unravel in this macabre exploration of tales depicting fallen souls. From the intricacies of everyday drama to the realms of supernatural intrigue, each narrative weaves a haunting tapestry that blurs the lines between the mortal and the supernatural.”

Nathan ( Hugo Dillon ) and Daniel ( Arben Bajraktaraj ) are caught in a road accident that kills them both. As they come to grips with their deaths, Nathan confronts his past and the consequences of his actions. Now trapped in the hellish void of Pandemonium, he encounters tortured souls like Jeanne ( Manon Maindivide ), a disturbed child; Julia ( Ophélia Kolb ), a grief-stricken mother; and Norghul ( Jean Rousseau ), the guide of the great void. Will he find a way to escape the torment that awaits him for eternity?

IN A VIOLENT NATURE – MAY 31

One of the most talked about new horror movies at Sundance this year was In a Violent Nature , uniquely framing a classic slasher movie from the perspective of its undead killer.

IFC Films will release In a Violent Nature exclusively in theaters on May 31 .

In the film, “When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it. The undead golem hones in on the group of vacationing teens responsible for the theft and proceeds to methodically slaughter them one by one in his mission to get it back – along with anyone in his way.”

Chris Nash wrote and directed In a Violent Nature . Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Sam Roulston, Alexander Oliver , and Lauren Taylor star in the slasher film.

Writer in the horror community since 2008. Editor in Chief of Bloody Disgusting. Owns Eli Roth's prop corpse from Piranha 3D. Has four awesome cats. Still plays with toys.

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Two New Images from ‘Alien: Romulus’ Spotlight the Heroes and the Giger-Faithful Monster

Fede Alvarez’s  ( Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe )  Alien: Romulus  will be unleashed in theaters nationwide on  August 16 , and Entertainment Weekly brings us two new images today.

The first image you’ll find below gives us another fresh look at the film’s Xenomorph, with Alvarez promising the outlet that it’s the most H.R. Giger-faithful Xenomorph of them all.

Entertainment Weekly writes, “… Alvarez promises [the Xenomorph’s design] is closer to H.R. Giger’s original creation than any other iteration.” The late H.R. Giger was of course integral to Ridley Scott’s Alien , designing the iconic monster the franchise is centered on.

The other image you’ll find below gives us a look at two of the human characters from Alien: Romulus , Archie Renaux’s Tyler and Cailee Spaeny’s heroine Rain Carradine.

Head over to Entertainment Weekly for their full preview of the upcoming film.

Here’s the full official plot synopsis for Alvarez’s  Alien: Romulus , which comes in the wake of Disney reviving the  Predator  franchise in spectacular fashion with last year’s  Prey …

“While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”

Cailee Spaeny  ( The Craft: Legacy ,  Pacific Rim Uprising )  leads the cast alongside  Isabela Merced,   David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fearn  and  Aileen Wu .

Alien: Romulus  takes place in between the first two films. It’s been described as “an original standalone feature,” one that “will focus on a group of young people  on a distant world.” 

Fede Alvarez co-wrote the script with  Rodo Sayagues  ( Evil Dead ).  Ridley Scott  is on board as producer for the film, the first movie in the franchise to be released by Disney.

Xenomorph in ‘Alien: Romulus’. 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

(L-R): Archie Renaux as Tyler and Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine in ‘Alien: Romulus.’. 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

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32 Best Horror Movies on Prime Video to Watch Right Now

Some of the horror genre’s most spine-tingling films are available to stream on Prime Video, from thrilling slashers to classic creature features.

Some of the horror genre’s most spine-tingling films are available to stream on Prime Video , from thrilling slashers to classic creature features. Whether you’re a fan of hair-raising supernatural horror hits like Hellraiser or a lover of more lighthearted classics such as Cocaine Bear , the popular streaming platform is sure to satisfy your needs.

Then there are the Amazon Originals, such as Luca Guadagnino's wild take on Suspiria . In other words, if variety is the spice of life, Amazon's horror selection is as spicy as can be. These horror classics and hits are just a few of the titles currently available on Prime Video for fans to enjoy on movie night.

Updated May 2nd by Adam Symchuk: This article was updated to provide more haunting horror picks from Prime Video.

32 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The texas chainsaw massacre.

Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , shot on a shoestring budget, has as fair a claim to being the scariest movie of all time as The Exorcist . And, oddly enough, what could be considered the movie's flaws are actually massively beneficial. These range from the acting to the technical elements. The film follows a group of adults on a scorching road trip through Texas, before they unintentionally stumble across a a grotesque family of cannibals.

One of the Ultimates

For one, none of the performances ring as particularly professional. Which isn't to say they're of poor quality, but they ring more true to real life than cinema. And, when there's a cannibalistic family with a chainsaw-wielding wrecking ball for a mascot, realism is absolutely terrifying. Whether it's one of the scariest movies of the '70s or of all time, Hooper's film is on the list.

The Best Prime Video Original Movie of Every Year (So Far)

31 the descent (2005), the descent.

The Descent , written and directed by Neil Marshall, follows a few female friends as they go on a disastrous caving expedition. But it's not the elements or a fall that does them in, it's a bunch of blind, bloodthirsty beasties. Talk about a claustrophobic nightmare. As they contend with the cramped cave system and monstrous creatures, they'll also have to contend with their own inner turmoil as it bubbles to the surface.

Terrors Lurk in the Darkness

A few years after he knocked everyone's socks off with the brilliant werewolf movie Dog Soldiers , Marshall took horror fans spelunking with his even better The Descent . It's a visceral masterwork with a devastating ending (depending on which version you watch). In other words, it does for cave diving what Jaws did for the ocean.

30 The Dead Zone (1983)

The dead zone.

*Availability in US

Not available

David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone , like the Stephen King novel before it, focuses on a sweet-natured schoolteacher who goes into a coma after a terrible car accident. After half a decade, he awakens, but to a much different life. It's one where his love is with another man, a new politician has raised his arrogant head, and the once-comatose man has now been either blessed or cursed with second sight.

One of the Definitive King Adaptations

If it weren't for The Shining , The Dead Zone would be the best King adaptation of the 1980s . And, even considering that, it's extremely close. The Dead Zone is more heartfelt, and as great as Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall are in that Stanley Kubrick film, Christopher Walken and Brooke Adams are equally adept, just in very different roles from that pair.

29 Stir of Echoes (1999)

Stir of echoes.

Stir of Echoes was released the same year as M. Night Shyamalan's mega-smash blockbuster The Sixth Sense . Suffice it to say, it didn't receive the same fiscal response. But, in terms of critical reception, they weren't separated by much. In this film, a blue-collar worker by the name of Tom Witzky is invited to be hypnotized at a playful party. Unfortunately, after succumbing to his hypnosis, Witzky is plagued by horrifying visions.

More than The Sixth Sense Light

Yet, to this day, The Sixth Sense has infinitely more clout than Echoes , even with Kevin Bacon headlining it. It's odd, because they're essentially equally effective films. After all, both come equipped with a devastating gut-punch of a twist ending. It's just that Echoes ' is slightly more based in reality, which arguably makes it even more horrifying.

28 Cocaine Bear (2023)

Cocaine bear.

Read Our Review

One of 2023's very best horror-comedies , Cocaine Bear works on several levels and is a win for Elizabeth Banks' directorial career after the financial tanking of her Charlie's Angels . Quite possibly the most rewatchable film of 2023, there isn't one scene in Cocaine Bear that doesn't masterfully walk the comedy-horror tightrope. People will be hooked from as early as the air-bound opening scene. If you weren't aware, this aptly named film tells the story of an illegal drug shipment going terribly awry, as a package of cocaine is inadvertently consumed by a black bear.

Scares and Laughs Abound

On top of its effective scares and belly laughs (which sometimes are provided at the same moment), Cocaine Bear also has one of 2023's best casts. Alden Ehrenreich and O'Shea Jackson Jr. lead the film well, but the supporting cast is even better. This is especially true of the late Ray Liotta, Margo Martindale, and an unrecognizable Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

27 Renfield (2023)

Renfield (2023).

A quotable horror comedy with a standout return-to-the-big-screen performance from Nicolas Cage, Renfield nonetheless whiffed at the box office. The narrative follows Nicholas Hoult as the title character, the long-serving familiar of Count Dracula. He begins to feel as though he's wasted his life, and wants to get out from under the thumb of his cruel master.

A Fantastically Fun Horror Film

While Hoult and Awkwafina were the perfect performers to hire for this kind of movie (both are perfectly in line with its goofy, genre-balancing tone), Renfield is really Cage's movie. Dracula may not be the protagonist, but every time he's onscreen, the movie goes from silly fun to entrancing. But, even when he's not there, the action sequences are entertaining and both Awkwafina and Hoult have fun.

26 Hostel (2006)

Eli Roth isn't opposed to directing more Cabin Fever and Hostel films, and there's certainly merit to that idea. While the former film introduced audiences to his grizzly sensibilities, it was the latter that brought him further into the public eye (thanks in no small part to the participation of Quentin Tarantino). The narrative follows a group of American 20-somethings as they travel to Slovakia for a reprieve, only to be captured and used as fodder for an underground torture organization.

For Anyone Looking for Maximum Gore

Similarly to the original Saw , the original Hostel did a lot to buoy the subculture of horror known as "torture porn." But, while that title makes the movie seem as though it's nothing more than blood and excess, the original Hostel is actually working with some brains. Though, there was admittedly less subtlety than in James Wan's Saw .

16 Best Freevee Movies on Prime Video to Watch Right Now

25 house on haunted hill (1959), the house on haunted hill.

People today may have forgotten William Castle’s name, but in the horror genre, he was a master. House on Haunted Hill is his masterpiece. Despite being tame in comparison to modern-day horror films, Castle’s film had moments of creativity that touched on all shades of emotions, from witty dialogue to over-the-top performances to a large serving of corny horror. Vincent Price stars as an elusive mogul who invites a handful of guests to participate in a simple game: should they successfully stay in his home overnight, they will win a huge cash prize. However, what they don't realizze is that they'll be subjected to horrors of all forms.

Colorful, Charming, and Creepy

The reason we’ve included House of Haunted Hill on the list is that it provides a nice colorful break in a genre that’s dominated by blood and gore. So if you’re in the mood to switch things up within the genre and crave something fun and spooky at the same time, give House on Haunted Hill a watch. It's a classic and a wonderful starter horror film.

24 Hell House LLC (2015)

Hell House LLC is one of the creepiest found footage films that revolves around the mysterious deaths of 15 visitors and employees in a haunted Halloween attraction. The film follows a documentary crew that's sent out to investigate the series of strange deaths that took place at the attraction. Along the way, they find a web of strange evidence ranging from photographs to film footage, along with a survivor who’s willing to go on the record about what transpired that night.

Found Footage Done Right

What makes Hell House LLC stand head and shoulders above normal found footage films is that it does a great job of building tension. It does so through its use of claustrophobic spaces while also maintaining a steady pace to the narrative. In other words, it focuses on the right things to make an effective horror film. Those with an adverse fear of clowns in particular will be terrified.

23 We Are Still Here (2015)

Heavily inspired by Italian filmmaker Lucio Fulci’s works, We Are Still Here operates on Fulci’s principles of horror mixed with a tinge of elements from other giants such as Stuart Rosenberg and H.P. Lovecraft. Despite its mixed reviews, We Are Still Here is a genuinely horrifying tale of how trying to escape personal tragedy only beckons it further. The film stars Barbara Crampton and Andrew Sensenig as Anne and Paul Sacchetti, a couple that move to a quiet neighborhood to recover from their son’s death when a presence begins to haunt them.

Fantastic Use of Pacing

We Are Still Here makes the list as it's a bona fide terror-inducing film. It feels like a slow-burn horror in the first half before descending into total chaos and spine-tingling horror in the second. This slow start and strong ending give the film a terrifying bite, along with an exceptional score from Wojciech Golczewski. It also practically guarantees the viewer won't get bored.

22 Let The Right One In (2008)

Let the right one in.

It could be argued that the vampire trope in cinema is done to death and watered-down to the point of boredom. Having said that, when a vampire film sidesteps these tropes and provides a fresh spin on the genre, that film is revered and put on a pedestal. Let the Right One In does just that. Tomas Alfredson’s film carves out a complicated quasi-romantic relationship between a 12-year-old outcast named Oskar and Eli, an aged vampire trapped in the body of a young child.

The Vampire Trope Used Effectively

Let the Right One In is a thoroughly underrated vampire horror film that manages to create horror by using children as its narrative vessel, making the film a tender yet daunting experience. We highly recommend watching this film as it'll challenge your view on an already set genre. Not to mention, the Americanized Let Me In is solid as well.

21 Run Sweetheart Run (2020)

Blumhouse Productions has steadily built up a great resume of horror films, with Run Sweetheart Run being another great addition. Touching upon the horrors of modern-day courtship, Shane Feste’s film plays out as a sinister cat-and-mouse game that results in a woman named Cherie (Ella Balinska) being chased by a sadistic man (Pilou Asbaek), whom she went out for dinner with. Expect the hairs on your arms to be raised throughout.

A Terrifying Game of Cat and Mouse

The film works as a ballet of death between the hunter and the hunted, playing out as a thriller with concentrated elements of horror. Pilou Asbaek, who you might remember from Game of Thrones, knocks his portrayal of a twisted, sadist out of the park. He stalks and penetrates the psyche of his powerless victims so well that the effect carries to the viewer.

20 High Tension (2003)

High tension.

A fast-paced horror thriller that’s told like it’s on steroids, High Tension is aptly titled and lives up to the name and hype. A gem in the French slasher category, the film follows two young women who go to a secluded farmhouse belonging to one of the girl’s parents, only to be attacked by a crazed psychopath. In other words, it's not the type of movie that's for the faint of heart.

A Bloody, Violent Treat

High Tension perfectly encapsulates the ethos of a gory cat-and-mouse game that sees the two women fight for their lives against the brutal insanity of the crazed killer. It all results in a bloodbath that’s hard to watch and even harder to digest. But, for those on the film's wavelength, it'll be a treat. High Tension is available through Freevee, meaning it can be viewed without a Prime Video subscription.

19 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

The only thing scarier than ghouls and monsters are ghouls and monsters in the guise of family and friends. Operating on this premise, Philip Kaufman’s film is based on Jack Finney’s 1958 novel and more than does justice to Finney’s classic paranoia-inducing sci-fi tale. It's also the scariest take on the material, though Abel Ferrera's Body Snatchers (1993) has its effective moments. In the film, Donald Sutherland and Elizabeth Driscoll play a pair of scientists who come face to face with alien "pod people" that duplicate the human population.

The Horror of the Uncanny

A short and tautly written film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers unpacks the mayhem of the '70s and creates an internal ethos of horror that is more concentrated and steady. Unlike other horror films that overtly paint a tacky picture of a monster, Invasion of the Body Snatchers relies on infiltration and obscurity to derive its horror, leaving the audience in the cold and the dark. It's an unforgettable experience and one of the best remakes of all time.

50+ Best Horror Movies of All Time, Ranked

18 the lazarus effect (2015).

The Lazarus Effect revolves around a couple of scientists who are working on a serum to assist coma patients. The serum can effectively bring a person back from death if administered quickly enough, but trials with a dog show that it can have some peculiar and mysterious side effects. When Zoe (Olivia Wilde) herself is effectively killed in a freak electrocution incident, her fiancé uses the serum on her to bring her back, despite the rest of their team being against it. Remarkably, Zoe is revived, but soon begins to exhibit some frightening and supernatural side effects.

A Change of Pace for Wilde

Over the years, talented actress and director Olivia Wilde has become well known for her racy scenes and usually picking serious dramatic roles. However, back in 2015, she tried something different with The Lazarus Effect and managed to steal the show with her eerie antics, making fans take note of her acting range. Not unlike Blake Lively in The Shallows . This film would be the first feature-length project directed by Jeremy Slater, who would later go on to create the MCU miniseries Moon Knight for Disney+.

17 Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Knock at the cabin.

Based on a novel by Paul Tremblay , the movie focuses on a gay couple and their adopted daughter who are vacationing at a cabin. The family's idyllic life is thrown into turmoil when four strangers knock on the door with a seemingly unbelievable story. Stating they have to come in, they each carry weapons and claim to be on a mission to prevent the apocalypse.

Shyamalan Back on Top Form

Another freaky psychological horror from visionary director M. Night Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin featured all his classic attributes. Between some spine-tingling tension, a unique story, and wonderfully crafted scenes, the film makes for a very unnerving one that isn't a typical horror — though it still manages to creep under the skin. Furthermore, Dave Bautista is terrific in it, demonstrating his acting range in a rare villainous role.

16 The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

One of the most frightening found footage horrors you're likely to see, The Taking of Deborah Logan featured some brilliant and creative filmmaking techniques on its way to a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As a medical student and her team film the life of an elderly Alzheimer's patient for a documentary on the disease, little do they know that the woman is suffering from a far more terrifying affliction.

Impressively Terrifying Scenes

With some amazing cinematography, a chilling story, and epic visuals that will stick with you, the film has become a cult favorite among horror fans and is widely regarded as one of the best films of its subgenre. Directed by Adam Robitel, the director of other horror films such as Insidious: The Last Key, you should put the kids to bed for this one. Why? Because it features some nightmarish scenes that they are bound to find truly disturbing.

15 Hellraiser (1987)

Hellraiser (1987).

Coming from the brilliant mind of Clive Barker, Hellraiser was one of the 1980s' most inventive horror films. With a strong central narrative about the desire for resurrection and how far someone will go for a love that's not real, Barker's film is far more than a blood fest. It's a well-acted, sublimely-constructed cinematic nightmare. The film sees Frank Cotton getting his hands on a mystical puzzle box, one that opens the door to another dimension once it is successfully solved. However, tampering with the box draws the attention of the Cenobites, grotesque and otherworldly creatures who feel pleasure and pain interchangably.

A Stone Cold Classic

Hellraiser is a thought-provoking masterpiece that sheds new light on words like "temptation" and "suffering." While the sequels fell to low-budget home releases and the modern reboot didn't appeal to everyone, Hellraiser is a classic piece of horror that's always good for a rewatch. Not to mention, its immediate sequel, Hellbound , is worth a watch. It's arguably the best film Barker ever directed.

14 M3GAN (2023)

A major hit in January 2023, M3GAN proved not only that the sentient doll concept is still a financially viable one, but that it can earn solid reviews to boot. M3GAN certainly earned every one of its compliments and box office dollars . It's a thoughtful, well-acted horror movie that never forgets to embrace a fast pace and the occasional laugh or three. It tells the story of Cady, a young orphan who is given a brand-new friend in the form of an animatronic doll. Unfortunately, things get a little complicated when the doll gains sentience.

Comedic Moments That Don't Come at the Expense of Horror

The titular character is realistically brought to life via incredible animatronics and (for more complex movements) equally impressive work from child actress Amie Donald. Then there's Jenna Davis' chilling vocal performance, which combines with the character's bizarrely operatic movements to create one of 2023's more memorable movie monsters. Not to mention, the title character's dance is nightmarish. A squel was quickly greenlit, with a pending release date set for 2025.

13 The Vast of Night (2019)

Andrew Patterson’s debut feature substantiates the point that the role of money in filmmaking can sometimes be bypassed if the filmmaker has a clear vision and a genuine propensity for storytelling. Stepping away from the norm attached to first-time filmmakers, Patterson’s film is a polished, self-assured sci-fi horror story of an alien abduction that makes a simple approach seem like a stylistic choice. Set in the 1950s, this film follows a pair of radio station employees as they stumble across an alien signal across the airwaves.

Style That Emphasizes the Substance

Throughout the film, there’s an eerie presence of someone out there but one you can’t grasp or put a finger on. The Vast of Night pays homage to American paranoia of the '50s, without falling into the trap of either celebrating or criticizing the cold-war sentiment of the times. Patterson constantly plays with the score, using obscure sounds layered with electronic cackling while also going so far as to completely melt the frame to black to emphasize the dialogue. Overall, Patterson’s film culminates into a well-told tale of horror pulsating within the framework of a sci-fi flick.

Hulu Horror: 25 Terrifying Movies to Watch for a Frightful Night

Posted: May 3, 2024 | Last updated: May 3, 2024

The Babadook (2014)

Directed by Jennifer Kent, this Australian horror film follows a mother and son who are haunted by a sinister presence after reading a mysterious pop-up book.

Saint Maud (2019)

Directed by Rose Glass, this psychological horror film follows a devout nurse who becomes dangerously obsessed with saving the soul of her terminally ill patient.

Midsommar (2019)

Directed by Ari Aster, this folk horror film follows a group of friends who encounter bizarre rituals while attending a Swedish midsummer festival.

Hereditary (2018)

Directed by Ari Aster, this chilling film follows a family haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences after the death of their secretive grandmother.

The Lodge (2019)

Directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, this psychological horror film follows two siblings who become increasingly isolated with their father's new girlfriend in a remote lodge.

A Quiet Place (2018)

Directed by John Krasinski, this film follows a family living in silence to avoid creatures that hunt by sound.

Parasite (2019)

Directed by Bong Joon-ho, this film blends genres including thriller and horror, telling the story of a poor family who scheme their way into the lives of a wealthy household.

Crawl (2019)

Directed by Alexandre Aja, this survival horror film follows a young woman and her father who become trapped in their home during a Category 5 hurricane, only to discover they're not alone.

Get Out (2017)

Directed by Jordan Peele, this socially conscious horror film follows a young African American man who uncovers disturbing secrets when he visits his white girlfriend's family estate.

The Others (2001)

Directed by Alejandro Amenábar, this supernatural horror film follows a woman who becomes convinced that her house is haunted by malicious spirits.

Directed by Jordan Peele, this horror film follows a family who encounter terrifying doppelgängers of themselves while on vacation.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, this found-footage horror film follows three student filmmakers as they investigate the legend of the Blair Witch in the Maryland woods.

The Descent (2005)

Directed by Neil Marshall, this horror film follows a group of female friends who become trapped in a cave system and encounter terrifying creatures.

You're Next (2011)

Directed by Adam Wingard, this home invasion horror film follows a family reunion that turns deadly when masked assailants begin targeting the family members.

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Directed by Drew Goddard, this horror-comedy explores a group of friends who encounter unexpected terrors during a weekend getaway.

The Host (2006)

Directed by Bong Joon-ho, this South Korean monster film follows a family's efforts to rescue their daughter from a giant mutated creature living in the Han River.

Hellraiser (1987)

Directed by Clive Barker, this horror film follows a man who inadvertently opens a portal to hell when he solves a mysterious puzzle box.

Gretel & Hansel (2020)

Directed by Oz Perkins, this dark fantasy horror film is a twisted reimagining of the classic fairy tale.

Evil Dead 2 (1987)

Directed by Sam Raimi, this cult classic horror-comedy follows Ash Williams as he battles demonic forces in a remote cabin.

28 Days Later (2002)

Directed by Danny Boyle, this post-apocalyptic horror film follows a group of survivors in London after a virus outbreak turns most of the population into raging zombies.

Train to Busan (2016)

Directed by Yeon Sang-ho, this South Korean zombie film follows passengers on a train fighting for survival during a zombie outbreak.

Silent Hill (2006)

Directed by Christophe Gans, this horror film follows a woman who searches for her missing daughter in the mysterious town of Silent Hill, where she encounters disturbing creatures and dark secrets.

The Host (2020)

Directed by Andy Newbery, this horror film follows a London banker who becomes entangled in a dangerous game with a mysterious host during a dinner party.

Let the Right One In (2008)

Directed by Tomas Alfredson, this Swedish romantic horror film follows a bullied boy who befriends a mysterious young girl who turns out to be a vampire.

The Wailing (2016)

Directed by Na Hong-jin, this South Korean horror film follows a police officer investigating a series of bizarre murders in his rural village.

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Indika review

This adventure-horror starring a russian orthodox nun takes a lot of risks, and mostly sticks the landing., our verdict.

A bizarre, confronting and darkly funny descent into hell, Indika takes a lot of risks and mostly sticks the landing.

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Indika is a misfit Russian Orthodox nun on a mission. She's tasked with delivering a note to the Danilov monastery, which is a welcome reprieve, because the other nuns in her own monastery hate her guts. Little wonder, though: she's not a very good nun.

What is it? Third-person puzzle-centric adventuring starring a jilted Russian Orthodox nun Expect to pay: TBC Developer: Odd Meter Publisher: 11 Bit Studios Reviewed on: RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAM Multiplayer? No Steam Deck: TBC Link: Official site

The trip is fated to go spectacularly wrong, and that's no spoiler, because the tone of Indika immediately warns us that we've entered a redemption-free zone. Across the six hours it took me to complete, our doomed hero moves through a succession of bleak, dehumanising environments, solves a bunch of puzzles, survives some utterly miserable encounters, fails to achieve anything she set out to do, and then must go on living. It didn't make me feel good, but I loved it all the same.

Indika's evocation of late 19th century Russia is daubed with horror-inflected surrealism: The narrow slush-flooded lanes of the monastery are shaded by sagging cupolas, and outside the monastery's walls everything is bizarrely oversized, even the mangy dogs. The world is pockmarked with unexplainable chasms and knotty architecture. Ruin is ubiquitous, though we're never told why. Environments rarely logically cohere: a town is shadowed by a giant viaduct, which is itself shadowed by an immense monastery. For some reason, I'm usually traversing this expanse via parapet and scaffolding. The result is impressionistic, dreamlike and rotely "videogame-y" at the same time, not least because the soundtrack consists of ambient-leaning chiptune that sometimes ascends into strobing dance.

What kind of game is Indika? Remove its tonally kaleidoscopic habit and it's a narrative-driven third-person adventure with environmental puzzles. The puzzles aren't always brilliant or original, but they are at least varied, and utilise the unconventional environments in interesting ways. It has some chase sequences with trial-by-error choices, and there's a platforming sequence involving giant dead fish that I downright hated. Indika can't shoot, punch, crouch or jump, but there's a prayer button.  

Shortly after leaving her monastery Indika meets escaped convict Ilya, who tempts her away from her mission with a more promising option: there's a mysterious artefact called the kudets in nearby Spasov, which offers "the only rational remedy from infertility, insobriety, infidelity, and other physical complications and afflictions of the soul." 

Ilya wants the kudets to fix his gangrenous arm; Indika just wants to stop the sinful voices in her head. She's constantly harried by temptations and thought crimes, though whenever she proselytises there's a faintly ironic ring to it, as if she's still pretty unsure about this whole nun thing. Sometimes her devilish alter-ego takes control and the world literally splits in two. The only way to fix it is to mash that prayer button, which slides the world back into proportional harmony. 

While its thematic concerns feel Dostoyevskian—see especially, the Grand Inquisitor section from The Brothers Karamazov—Indika's presentation more closely resembles the kitchen sink postmodernism of '90s film, that decade of showy contrasts when you could put breakbeats in mediaeval capers and no one would bat an eyelid. For the Eastern Europe heads there's also traces of Tarkovsky, and a hint of the dejected humour found in Pathologic 2 and the novels of Laszlo Krasznahorkai. In other words, Indika's atmosphere draws from a variety of sources that are unusual for games to draw from, bolstering its disorientating weirdness to great effect. 

But that's not all! Indika's present-day journey is punctuated by a series of flashbacks taking the form of pixel art mini-games referencing Pac-Man, Micro Machines and Frogger, among others. Via these flashbacks we meet Indika as a 15-year-old teenager and eventually learn why she was forced into the monastery. What registers at first as welcome tonal relief descends, of course, into skin-crawling darkness.

The game's flagrant tonal disjuncture (cute pixels one moment, Unreal Engine miserablism the next) is one of the reasons for Indika's pre-release notoriety. It serves a greater purpose than flair, because Indika has some fun but ambiguous metatextual ambitions. For example, there's an RPG stats system which lets me cash in points for various undesirable attributes such as guilt and grief. I'm twice warned by loading screen tips that the points mean nothing, and it's true that levelling has no noticeable effect in-game. Indika appears to use XP as a form of spiritual currency—the greater her level, the stronger her spiritual rectitude and power over her alter-ego—but this is a game that revels in small ambiguities designed to tease questions rather than bludgeon with meaning. Even its ending—into which the levelling system factors heavily, but not in the way you would expect—is provocatively elliptical, even while it goes a little way towards "explaining" both the stats and the pixel art throwbacks.

By contrast, it can also lapse into didacticism. During one of the game's most disturbing scenes, Indika exhorts her devilish alter-ego: "Convince me that I haven't done anything bad." The alter-ego scolds her for irrational adherence to religious commandments, which is probably music to her ears since at this point she's well past the point of forgiveness. "Just remember that good and evil, warm and cold, are just lines on the thermometer… one cannot exist without the other," so saith the devil. In some ways the game's habit of wedging heavy-handed speechifying into otherwise dismal set pieces is absurdly funny (and also: not at all rare for Russian film and literature!), but the experience is better when the art direction—especially the brilliant in-game cinematography, but also the phantasmagoric architecture—is allowed to do the thematic heavy lifting. 

So it's a mesmeric narrative achievement, but does it cope as a game? For those looking for a Russian take on A Plague Tale: Innocence or whatever, the brevity here, the linearity, and the inhospitably hopeless mood might be deal breakers. But I respect how Indika doesn't linger on some of its more interesting puzzle ideas for the sake of fleshing out the runtime. A lot of the game's confrontational power comes from the bracing abruptness of its finish.

Indika takes some wild tonal risks but mostly plays it safe when it comes to the stuff you do with your hands. And even if it's not always successful—even if the ye olde faith-versus-reason debate does nothing for your big 21st century brain—the cumulative effect is a game that manages to mash together a bunch of familiar elements into a new form that's disquieting and gratifyingly obtuse.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day. 

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