The claustrophobic walls of grief have been closing in on Sarah, who tragically lost her husband and daughter in a car accident.

One year later, she and her girlfriends go on their annual adventure trip and are reunited at a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, this time to go spelunking in the caverns hidden deep in the woods. The intended bonding-and-healing adventure quickly turns into a struggle for survival as they become lost underground and find themselves trapped with no apparent way out.  As their fears increase, their best and worst qualities come to the surface, but their horror increases exponentially when the women discover that they are surrounded by a horde of cannibalistic monsters who have evolved to live underground, and our heroines are forced to become their most primal selves in order to survive.

The Descent is a tightly wound metaphor for grief, loss, and survivor’s guilt, a claustrophobic nightmare where things cannot seem to get any worse for the characters until they absolutely do. It is a film in which the unthinkable happens twice and closure always seems just out of reach.