The Descent’s OG Ending Is ‘The Only Ending There Is’, Says Neil Marshall

In the pantheon of British horror, The Descent looms immense. 20 years ago, filmmaker Neil Marshall sent six women spelunking in the Appalachian mountains, where they encountered all kinds of primal terrors – not just the claustrophobic environs of the uncharted cave system itself, but its humanoid horrors lurking in the shadowy. Two decades on, Empire celebrates the legendary classic by reuniting Marshall with his cast for a brand recent group interview – and the filmmaker has some thoughts on the film’s alternative ending.

If you saw The Descent in the UK you’ll know it ends – SPOILER ALERT! – with Shauna Macdonald’s grieving Sarah seemingly escaping the cave system, only for it to be revealed that she’s hallucinating, still trapped in the depths, envisioning her lost daughter as the cave’s creatures skitter in the darkness. In the US ending, Sarah actually did escape – which allowed for the production of The Descent Part 2, on which Marshall was only a producer. “It was always argued that the alternative ending was the happy ending. To my mind, there’s no happiness for Sarah outside that cave,” Marshall tells Empire. “Her family’s dead, her friends are gone, she’s completely insane. The best version of it to me was Sarah being, in her head anyway, back with her daughter. So that’s the only ending there is, as far as I’m concerned.”

Looking back on the film, Marshall remembers the thing that spurred him to make one of the most terrifying horror movies of all time. “One Dog Soldiers review said it was more funny than scary, and asked when a British filmmaker was going to make a truly scary horror film again. I took that as a challenge,” he recalls. Now, two decades on, the film hasn’t lost any of its potency. “It hasn’t dated,” says Marshall. “We didn’t fill it with contemporary needle-drops, and because it’s not set in a city or anything like that, it doesn’t really age. The other thing is that people are still claustrophobic. So it’s always going to work.” Anyone fancy a spelunk?

Read Empire’s full The Descent reunion interview in The Running Man issue, on sale Thursday 28 August. Order a copy online here. The Descent returns to cinemas in 4K from 24 October.