FAQ for
The Descent (2005) More at IMDbPro »

No. It came out at roughly the same time as "The Cave" and was made in England.

No. Apart from the title and the general theme of underground monsters, the two have nothing in common.

The monsters, called "Crawlers" in the credits, are, according to the director, Neil Marshall, "cave men that never left the cave; theyve evolved over thousands of years, living down there in families. They've lost their eyesight; they have acute hearing and smell; and they function perfectly in the pitch black."

The movie had a longer, very different ending on its original release in the UK, which was trimmed for US release. In the original version, after seeing the "ghost" of Juno, Sarah awakes in the cave to find that her escape was a dream, and that she is still deep in the earth, utterly alone, and beyond any hope of rescue. Realising she is about to die, she hallucinates that her dead daughter is sitting before her, blowing out the candles of her birthday cake. The camera then moves away through cavern after cavern after cavern, to the accompanying screeches of the crawlers as they close in.

Another interpretation of this original ending is that Sarah has simply lost the will to survive, even if there is a chance to get out. Her thoughts carry her to a touching reunion with her daughter; a foresight that, in the light of all the horror she has experienced, may even be preferable to survival, and convinces her to give up. Perhaps the hallucination of escaping and being haunted by Juno has made her realize that she can get out of the cave, but never truly 'escape' from it. This is, of course, open for debate.

For those who have seen the UK version, the American version contains no added scenes; it is merely shorter.

A detailed comparison between the R-Rated version and the Unrated version can be found here.

One possible implication is that Sarah's husband was distracted in his driving by the presence of Juno, and thus that Juno's affair was indirectly responsible for his death. And again, the original British ending reconnects with the beginning scenes more directly than the US cut. In the first vision of the birthday cake, the cake has five candles; in the final scene of the British uncut version, it has six. Some have speculated that this is a reference to the lives of all six girls being snuffed out. However, on the UK's DVD commentary, Neil Marshall and his editor acknowledge that this was in fact a continuity error and was thus an accident.

Juno. The American version of the film ends on a rather ambiguous note; whether that was the real Juno, Juno's ghost, or simply Sarah's mind conjuring visions of her own guilt is never fully explained. The original British ending makes it much clearer.

It is never explicity stated, but it is strongly implied. After the raft sequence, Sarah's husband helps Juno instead of his wife. He is also distant in the car, before the accident, which Sarah does notice, and might in fact be at the origin of the accident itself. There are a number of significant glances exchanged between Juno and Sarah's husband Paul at the beginning, and during the initial drinking party, Sarah comments that Paul used to say the phrase "Love each day." When Sarah finds Beth dying in the cavern, Beth hands her a pendant that Juno had accidentally left on her when she stabbed her, saying "It's from Paul." On it are inscribed the words "Love each day." Sarah shows Juno the pendant immediately before she hobbles her with the pick. At one point, Juno is told by Beth that Sarah has lost a lot on that day (day of the accident), Juno answers that "We all lost something that day", implying that she lost someone important to her that day. This comes along with the revelation that Juno left the country (supposedly Scotland) precipitously that same day a year aggo, leaving Sarah seriously injured in a hospital, which was visibly something that Beth never really forgave Juno for. All of this combined suggests strongly that Juno and Sarah's husband had an affair.

This all depends on your point of view. The director, Neil Marshall, said that it was possible that she went slightly insane in the darkness of the cave - thus a 'descent into madness' - and imagined the crawlers but killed her friends instead on the Region 2 DVD commentary. Marshall also stated on the cast's commentary that he cut out a shot of a silhoutted crawler at the end of the hospital corridor during Sarah's nightmare sequence when she is running through the halls to further imply that she had hallucinated them (and was foreshadowing things to come).

The reason The Descent is so popular is because it can have so many interpretations and no definite ending can be agreed on but if it were true than there would be several plot holes.

We do not know if Juno lived,but it is most likely she died. She may return to the sequel.

It looks very likely as Juno is in the sequel, and has survived for 3 days on her own. Of course, there could be plot twists in the sequel aswell, and it may also be a dream.