The Descent (2005)

Nightmares come to fruition when a group of adventurous women go down into the earth only to discover that they aren't alone in the darkness.

Directed by: Neil Marshall

Cinematography by: Sam McCurdy

Country: United Kingdom

Genre: Horror/Thriller/Adventure/Action

Director Neil Marshall began his career with two solid creature feature horror films: Dog Soldiers (2002), and The Descent. His following two films were fairly haphazard action flicks, but his demonstrated ability to direct brutally intense and violent action scenes on a grander and grander scale caught many eyes.

Lucky for him, a few of those eyes belong to the Game of Thrones showrunners, and Marshall earned the opportunity to helm two of the show’s biggest episodes. He directed 2014’s “The Watchers on the Wall,” in which the Night’s Watch faces off against the wildlings, and more notably, he directed the Battle of Blackwater Bay in the season two episode “Blackwater,” widely considered to be one of the best episodes in the series, and setting the bar for the colossal, jaw-dropping battles that Game of Thrones would come to be known for.

In The Descent - one of the best horror movies of the 2000s, and Marshall’s crowning film achievement about six friends who become trapped and hopelessly lost in an uncharted cave system inhabited by bloodthirsty humanoid creatures - we can see these same battles shrunk down to their basest form; using his camera to express the primordial, savage, claustrophobic urgency of fighting hand-to-hand for one’s own survival, especially when it’s against something acting entirely on instinct, something that can’t be reasoned with. It’s visceral, and never easy to watch.

Distributed by: Lions Gate Films