“The Descent” is a decently scary horror movie. I gave it an 8.2 out of 10 because the filmography is not overwhelming and there are better horror movies out there. Still, I had loads of fun watching it. I can recommend the film for a relaxing movie night with friends. Be aware that this review contains spoilers. I advise you to watch the film first.

I came up with a short but quite amusing theory while watching the movie. With this theory, I want to show that watching movies can also be a fun and creative experience. Also, the theory should not be taken too seriously. I am sure you will see the plot in a different light.

The Mountain

The movie's main story begins when six women enter a mountain to go caving. They relentlessly go deeper and end up in an uncharted cave system. Additionally, a tunnel has collapsed behind them and they are now stuck. They move forward to find an escape and indeed find a drawing that illustrates that there is a second exit. Although, they have to pass through the territory of cannibals. These creatures look human but have adapted to the darkness. Five of the women fall victim to these cannibals, accidents, and internal betrayals and are forever lost in the mountain. In the end, only the protagonist makes it out alive, flees from the area, and is overwhelmed by shock.

Digestion

My theory suggests that the mountain itself has digested five victims. First, the women go inside the mountain or, alternatively, enter the mouth. They continue to go deeper and squeeze themselves through a tight tunnel, which collapses once they pass. The mountain has literally swallowed the women and they are now stuck. The tight tunnel is the esophagus and the big rooms where the women end up represent the stomach.

The main rooms of the stomach are filled with bones and thick, syrupy fluids. Those fluids are the digestive juices, the bones the digested. The cannibals inside the caves seem human-like at first glance but could very well be part of the mountain after closer inspection. These creatures help the mountain to digest by killing its victims. Like the defensive mechanisms of the body, they are weak alone but get the job done in big groups. Also, they are always looking out (listening) for intruders. The victims then, like zombies, turn into the same creatures after some time. They also become part of the mountain and get integrated into the digestive system.

Lastly, the women find a drawing that illustrates that the mountain has a second exit. The first exit is the mouth through which they have entered. The second exit then, according to the theory, has to be anus. The protagonist only reaches this second exit after passing through all the chambers of the mountain’s digestive system. Furthermore, she is extremely dirty, escapes from the mountain as fast as possible, and cries desperately in her car. She looks and behaves like she was just pooped out.

All in all, the six women have involuntarily made a journey through the mountain’s gastrointestinal system and five of them got digested on the way. The five victims became part of the mountain and are now lost in its deep system of digestive chambers. They are forced to help the mountain digest even more victims that will have the same fate. Only the protagonist luckily escaped – Her escape underlines and reinforces the theory even more.  

A Killer’s Hallucination

In all seriousness, I believe that the protagonist killed all the other characters in the movie. The first scene shows a driving accident. The protagonist sits behind the wheel, does not pay attention, and crashes into a truck. Her husband and baby both get killed. Her husband violently gets pierced by pipes and her baby who sits in the backseat obviously dies (small infants should always sit in the front). Contrarily, she miraculously wakes up with a few bruises and is fit enough to run through the hospital. It is even more suspicious that only a year passes when she goes on a retreat with her friends.

During the retreat, all of her friends die inside the mountain. Once again, she is the only one who survives. Objectively, both scenarios happening in such short succession just seems like too big of a coincidence. I believe that the movie shows her story but not necessarily reality. Still, I also believe that the protagonist believes that (her own) story.

When the protagonist wakes up in the hospital, she hallucinates in the corridor. All of the people disappear and she is running away from the lights turning off behind her. This gets exposed as a hallucination and the protagonist only realizes this when her friend catches her. I think that she also hallucinated what happened inside the mountain, but no person could wake her up before it was too late.

Furthermore, the movie illustrates her violent and ruthless nature. She is aggressively driving the car on the way to the cave system, even though she had a major car accident just one year before. Also, she is shown to kill her friend (or at least wound her badly and leave her behind to die) before she exits the mountain. This illustrates what she is willing to do, believing she is doing the right thing. Her extremely vivid and real hallucinations could easily cloud this belief. One more sign is that the tunnel is collapsing right after she passes. This could be her subconscious signaling that she is the actual perpetrator and that she trapped her friends.

From the perspective of the police, her story does not make any sense and seems like a fabricated reality (she is telling a story about mole-like zombies that ate all of her friends). Moreover, her family and shortly after her friends dying while being with her is too big of a coincidence. In both cases, she is the only survivor and the police have no other witnesses to countercheck her story. Finally, the last picture, in my opinion, confirms that the police do not believe her. She is sitting in a room with no exits. The camera zooms out and it looks like the protagonist is sitting in a prison cell while the camera is looking through a small window on the cell door. Ironically, she did escape the mountain but ended up in another enclosure. The movie title could as well be: “The Descent into Madness”.