7. The Descent (2005) – Mental Illness
Taken at face value, The Descent‘s premise is fairly standard horror fare: a group of women become trapped in a claustrophobic cave system where they find bloodthirsty creatures lurking in the dark. However, it isn’t one of the best horror movies of the ’00s for nothing: there’s a great deal that can be read into its story, particularly when considering the context offered by its opening scenes. After protagonist Sarah loses her husband and daughter in a car crash, she loses touch with her friends, and The Descent‘s spelunking trip is an attempt to mend that rift. This has prompted speculation that the film’s story is actually a metaphor for Sarah’s descent (see what they did there?) into mental illness.
According to multiple theories, the cave system represents Sarah’s mind, labyrinthine and darkened by her mental illness. Her attempts to escape then clearly represent her attempts to live with or overcome her mental illness, despite not knowing how to navigate the unforgiving and unknowable terrain in which she’s trapped. The deaths of her various friends are then thought to signify Sarah’s difficulty maintaining friendships as her mental health continues to decline – they’re all trying to help her get out, but the darkness claims each of them in turn.
Though The Descent has two different endings (the original UK release and the theatrical cut), they both represent the same idea: that Sarah can’t truly escape the horrors in the cave/her mind. In one ending, she hallucinates her escape, and in another, she’s further traumatized by the experience to the point of hallucination, both signifying that Sarah will never be free of her ordeal. The hidden subtext of The Descent is particularly bleak, as it transposes the horrors of Sarah’s declining mental health for something far more tangible, and there doesn’t seem to be any good outcomes for the film’s protagonist.