Down in the Underground | 31 Nights of Horror

For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Day 4 prompt is Down in the Underground. I watched the new movie, The Descent on Amazon Prime Video. 

Storyline

A woman goes on vacation with her friends after her husband and daughter encounter a tragic accident. One year later she goes hiking with her friends and they get trapped in the cave. With a lack of supply, they struggle to survive and they meet strange blood thirsty creatures.
 

Our Thoughts on The Descent (2006)

Although filmed a bit dark to watch on my laptop in a crappy roadside motel room in the middle of Washington, this was a very good movie. It had a great story and I loved the crawlers. I have no idea how I have passed over this one for almost 20 years. 

7 out of 10

Twenty-one separate cave sets were built for the film. These were carefully reused with different camera angles, set dressing and lighting to suggest a nearly endless collection of interconnected tunnels and caverns. For realism, the makers often limited the lighting of the sets to light sources that the protagonists brought with them, such as flashlights, helmet lights and light sticks.

The Crawlers have the auditory Shout-Out to the Predator series. They’re similar to the clicks dolphins make, and are a very early tip-off that they use echo location.

The park where the women are supposedly meeting, “Chatooga National Park,” does not exist. The name references the Chatooga River, which is a real river where the movie Deliverance (1972) was filmed, which is loosely referenced in this movie (rough nature versus city dwellers). In Deliverance (1972), this is the river that leads Lewis and friends into trouble.

Trivia 

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