 Hello everybody, and welcome to a very special episode of E-Fat Movies. We've got a whole list of things that make this special, but I prefer to start with the obvious being from the title we're covering The Descent, a film that I and many others consider a horror classic. Tightly written, wonderfully shot, pays to perfection. It also boasts several homages to classic horror, and, well, taking advantage of subverting a lot of horror tropes, I'd say, with an impressive use of a smaller budget, and, hell, it's a movie that might just scare the shit out of you. Now, it's got a very good and strong reputation, and hopefully we can spend the whole day talking about it, or at least the whole video. The real reason that this is such a special episode is that we have the director of The Descent with us today, Mr. Neil Marshall. Thank you so much for joining us, sir. How are you doing? Good. Thank you for having me. Awesome to meet you, honestly, because this has been a pretty well-liked movie for me for a long time. So, to meet anyone behind works that give me some great experiences is always something I'm after, but... But we go into it. For those who don't know who Neil is, I'm sure you'll be aware of his work, even if you don't recognize his name. Dog Soldiers is one of the most recognizable from his filmography, I'd say, being a brilliant British action horror movie, complete with werewolves and a wonderful sense of humor. We, of course, have The Descent that we'll be talking about today, and then we have a flurry of other entries that I'm sure people will recognize, like Doomsday, post-apocalyptic action movies set in the UK, Centurion, historical war movie filled with all kinds of action, focusing on a group of survivors after a big old bloody battle, which then took you to some interesting sets of directorial positions for television, including Black Sails, Constantine Hannibal, Timeless, Westworld, Lost in Space, and, of course, Game of Thrones. Neil, you directed, I think, one of the two of the most beloved episodes of the entire show, being Blackwater, which featured a battle that finally gave Game of Thrones fans a lot of what they were looking for in the series, being a battle. And you directed the ninth episode of season four, which I can just say, Watchers on the Wall just so happens to be my favorite episode of the entire series. Ooh, I didn't know. Look at all three of that. It's fucking great. Oh, yeah. Cool. Love to talk to you about that. Alas, we have plenty to talk about today anyway. Neil, more recently. Blameless for season eight. That's good. And that's good. Absolutely. Okay. All right. He can stay. More recently, you've written, directed 2020's The Reckoning and 2022's The Lair, the form of being a horror movie set in the 1660s, and the latter being more of an action horror with a little bit of sci-fi. In any case, sir, it's an absolute pleasure to have you here. Very much. Thank you to Critical Drinker for connecting us. And well, why don't we start with when it comes to the dissent, what in particular, if there was anything, gave you a sort of spark for writing a story like this? It originally came out of a challenge, but somebody was reviewing Dog Soldiers and they said, well, this is, this is all very well. It's a British horror movie, but it's also kind of a playful laughs. Like, when is somebody going to make another really scary British horror movie? And I kind of thought that felt like the gauntlet had been thrown down. So I set that as my task was to do much more of a straight out, terrifying horror movie without so many of the laughs, without any laughs really. And try and make it not just literally dark because it's set in the dark quite a lot, but as dark in tone as possible and give it a really bleak ending because I love a good bleak ending for a horror movie. There's a bunch of challenges there and I kind of... This I guess would bring us to interest and discussion that we can have later as well, unless you want to do it now, about the American audiences weren't so keen on that bleak ending. And so you had a slightly different version for different audiences. I was always curious to know what you thought about that. Yeah, I mean, I'll point it out when we get to it, because ultimately the difference is about 30 seconds at the end of the movie. I always thought it was bizarrely misguided that the ending that I intended which we'll see today, I believe, because it's the unrated version you'll have the full ending on. It's always inspired by the ending of Brazil, Terry Gilliams Brazil, the notion that the character basically goes insane, but within their insanity, they actually find some kind of happiness. You know, characters cases like she's reunited with her daughter. So that was some kind of bizarre, even though she's physically, she's doomed in her mind, she's found some kind of happiness. Whereas the American ending, which basically cuts off the ending of the film by 30 seconds, suggests that she escapes from the cave. But the problem with that to me is that that would be worse for her. She's like, she's completely insane. All of her friends are dead, all of her family's dead. She's probably going to get blamed for it all anyway. She's probably going to spend the rest of her life in an asylum or something, prison for all this. How do you explain it? You know, I just didn't see that as being a happy ending. But hey, I really like your interpretations as well, because like there are so many directions you can take it. A lot of people do split them up into happy and sad ending, which is, it feels a lot like there's a lot going on. And a lot of it is peppered throughout the film, setting up exactly what a mental state is and what those endings can mean. No need to put in concrete any one particular meaning, especially when you have multiple cuts of the ending, but it's super interesting to think about. And I think so. And I like to keep some stuff kind of vague in here, because there's been various kind of like essays and things written about what it all means and other creatures for real or they're not real for real, all this kind of stuff. And I just, I like the fact that people discuss that. I'm not going to say one way or the other. I think ambiguity is a great thing to have in movies like this, you know, to inspire that kind of speculation. Especially films that deal with, you know, with emotional and mental trauma. It's like, it's ripe for something like that. So I just went with the flow. You mentioned the goal to create a relatively bleak ending, although that was sort of something you had in mind from the beginning. What do you think sort of drives you toward that? Is it the lack of sort of bleak endings in cinema, typically speaking? A little bit, a little bit of that, but also because some of my favorite movies have really bleak endings. I mean, being another, I'm bringing an example of, you know, essentially a kind of an open ended, open to interpretation kind of bleak. Yeah, they don't just defeat the creature and everyone's happy. It's quite that way. Yeah. I mean, that was another sort of benchmark for me doing this plot. But yeah, I don't know, maybe it's sensibilities, but I kind of like that kind of stuff. Oh, no, I'm with you. I especially, I mean, I don't know if you feel the same way, but I felt like this, that was the more real ending. It felt a little bit less believable that she could escape almost so easily. And, you know, dragging her back felt appropriate, even though it's, you know, depending on the viewer might consider it even more horrifying. Yeah, and we've even like shot the way that she does escape. You'll see that the way that we shot the escape was sort of stylized. It almost looks like she's kind of climbing the stairway to heaven or something like that. This godlight coming down from the sky. You know, it was all deliberately done that way, but we'll see all that later on. And the other kind of origins of it, that on the back of Dogfills, I was approached by this company called Cellador Productions, who are most famous for creating Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but they were setting up a film launch and they had done one film and they'd saw Dogfills, they liked it. So I got invited into Meet the Producers and they said, well, what would you like to do next? And the first thing I presented them with was it's basically the feature length version of my student graduation film, which is all about zombies on an oil rig. That could be cool. They looked at it, they said, we love it, but there's just no way we can afford it. So have you got anything else? That's small. And so I had the meeting in London, I got on the train back to Newcastle that day and by the time I reached Newcastle, I'd come up with the descent on the train. And then it was just like, the stories fell into place quite quickly. Once it became about, you know, going into caves. I was like, caves are dark. You don't have to build so many sets. That could be cheaper. We did the whole film in a black room. It never quite worked out that way, but it certainly was manageable that way. Dog Soldiers was a, it's quite a different film to the descent. What would like some of the lessons that you learned from making that film and going through the process of creating that story and then moving on to the descent, which is darker, more serious in tone? Well, certainly working with the ensemble cast, because both of them has like, you know, it's an ensemble cast in both films, almost like equal number of people in a way. It was a very testosterone-y, blokey kind of thing in Dog Soldiers, with the one exception of Megan. And this one, it was like the complete flip side of like, let's try an all-female cast and see where that goes. And it became a different kind of flavor completely. But the lesson I mainly learned was about working with the actors and not. I had six years to prepare Dog Soldiers in terms of like, how long it took to get the money together. During that six years, not only was I rewriting the script, but I was also, I shot-listed the entire film and I storyboarded the entire film. And on about the day two or three, I ended up throwing all that in the trash because the actors were not standing where I thought they were going to stand three years earlier. They're not doing that. They have ideas and thoughts and they want to bring to the table. And it was like, right, okay, so this is how we're going to do it. And it was real eye-opener. And it was a much more inventive and collaborative process to get that way. So I didn't bother doing any kind of shot lists or whatever for the descent. We just figured it out as we went through. Right. So a kind of more of like a spontaneous approach to storytelling, like throughout production. Yeah. Well, a spontaneous approach to blocking and shooting scenes and working with the cast on set. Obviously sticking. We had a, we'd worked for a couple of years or whatever to get the script right. And then that was pretty much locked in cement by the time we shot it. From a logistical point of view, like what was the biggest challenge of shooting the descent? Well, I suppose it's figuring out how to do the cave because the script was very, very specific. It was very linear. Like it went from one chamber to the next chamber to the next chamber at each chamber presenting certain problems. So we very quickly realized we're never going to film this in a real cave because we're never going to find caves that fit the profile perfectly. Like, you know, we have to scout like a hundred caves and we might find something that fits what it needs to be in the script. So plus we'd probably all die if we went down and tried to film in real caves. We did some caving with the cast advance just to get, I went down just to get into the mindset really having, you know, getting into the pitch black and crawling through little spaces and stuff like that. And that was a real adventure, but it certainly taught me that like filming in real caves was somebody was going to die. So it then became a question of like, well, how can we build them as sets and make it affordable and manageable? And once that decision was made, it was like, okay, that's how we're going to do it. And it's like little technological things of like this new kind of foam spray had just been invented. Like you have this huge gun that just sprays foam everywhere and it sets hard like rock and you can spray it into molds or you can carve it into shape so you can all sorts of stuff with it. And doing that as opposed to plaster work which would have been the old school way of doing it actual plaster work every year which weighs a ton and costs a fortune that really saved us. So having these foam caves built around wooden structures and about, I think we built, I think it was like 10 sets altogether and some of them were like tiny. Some of them, one of them was huge and we really reused it about five times in the film. But some of them were tiny. But every set got used. One in set in particular, I think we used it 12 times in the film for different locations, but you can't tell. Because each time we'd go and spray it a little bit differently or move a rock around or get any little tricks like that and you'd never know it was the same place. So the crew did a fantastic job on achieving that because as you're watching the film it really does feel like they're going through different chambers and the sets themselves look fantastic. Oh yeah, I had no idea that it was all like constructed when I watched the movie the first time. I mean, I learned it afterwards that all of these sets had been like made and built and changed and altered. And it was like, wow, how especially the fact that some of them were miniatures as I had learned, but they look so real. I was legitimately fooled by it. It's a couple of matte paintings. There's a couple of miniature shots, that extension, things like that, but there isn't a real cave in the whole movie anyway. That's impressive. Yeah. So that's the cheat. Ever in a cave, we constantly had guys with like spritzes or a hose pipe or whatever like above the set, just like having this misty rain and water running down the walls and hanging in the air. I think that just really helped give it a sense of being in a real place. That kind of effort goes a huge way because that work they've done and you directed, of course, that it's forever. The descent is forever. And it's really, well, it meant to say, I should have said it earlier, go watch this film before watching us watch it. Okay, you can experience it. Pause this video right now, go watch it. We'll wait for you. Yes, we'll wait for you. Oh, to your local theaters and buy a ticket for the descent and watch it because this is not going to be the ideal way to watch the movie. We'll be probably doing a lot of talking. There will be spoilers. Yes. Oh no. But yeah, do that. Before we begin though, what's your favorite movie? My favorite movie is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ooh, that's a pretty solid choice. That is a very fair answer. We'd be greedy enough for two more. Okay, Alien and American World of London. I'm noticing something with these shots. All right. I assume the thing has got to be up there as well. Thing would probably be my next choice. We recently re-watched that film. It's phenomenal as well. It is so good. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me that you like Raiders so much with how we talked about things beforehand. The Indiana Jones kind of a culty, adventurous take on classic horror stuff and those mystical elements. Yeah, it seems like it'd be right up your alley. Well, the guy's face melts again. It's all good. Absolutely. Were you a big fan of Dial of Destiny, Neil? Oh, bring the tone down. What do you mean? There were only three Indiana Jones movies. Of course, yes. What do you mean? My mistake. My mistake was great. Yeah, it's a good trilogy. I might weep into my coffee, so let's not go there. Well then, on an uplifting note, would you guys like to watch The Descent un-rated? Absolutely. That's the old Lionsgate logo, isn't it? They don't use that one anymore. I really like the old one. Yeah, it looks cool. Wasn't it? It's like a steampunky thing going on. It has lions and a gate. So Pathé's the kind of one of the big heroes here. Lionsgate obviously only picked it up for the US distribution, and ultimately they're the ones who suggested the edited version. Pathé are the British ones, aren't they? They finance a lot of movies in the UK. Pathé distributed dog soldiers, and then they picked up this one, but Sellador produced and financed this one. Thank you, Sellador. Thank you, Sellador. Thank you for paying the bills. He did a good one. Get Neal in to do more movies like this, please. They kind of retired after... They did Slumdog Millionaire, and they won tons of Oscars, lots of money and stuff for that, and then they basically packed it in after that. It was kind of like, you know, quit while you're ahead. They went about a high with that one, yeah. That's my niece, the little girl. Oh, really? Oh, really? That's Gilm's time. Yeah, well, she was six then, so no, she's 20, er, 26, sorry. She liked this movie? Yeah. So this... Well, she saw it when she was about 10. Oh, my goodness. She told me on set. She was totally unfazed by it because she'd been on set, and she'd met... Oh, yeah. ...the creatures herself. Oh, yeah, I suppose so. Makes you look at the film different. And the actresses are doing the whitewater rafting here. I think it gives you a little insight as well, straight away, into the personalities of each of them. Like, which one's the fun, loving, adventurous one? Which one's a bit more, like, you know, conservative and cautious? Just by the reactions to going over the falls there. That's quite cool. The alpha females and the beta females and stuff that were in the group. It's really interesting. Yeah, because, like, when we get to the third act, these three particularly in there, you know, what relationships are shared between them are going to be the most important. Yeah, I'm sure you've all noticed the font. Yes. Um, this classic government of font. This is the first time I'd used it. It's very fitting. These looks, they tell you everything. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't have to beat you over the head with it. Expressions say a lot. There are people who can see this film and have no idea that there's, like, a fair sub-plot idea happening. Because I'll just be watching for, like, the more overt stuff. But I love the subtlety. Mm-hmm. It's a nice one. A film gives me a little bit of credit. Barbie, no. Ah! No, I'm a flex-max. So, yeah, I was trying to come up with a way for, like, this what's coming up to be even more of a shock. And I kind of thought, well, let's put it in midway through the credits when people are expecting the credits to finish. Then something happens. I was like, I'll just stick it in the middle of the credits somehow. Great effect. That's such a great shot. It's worth noting the hand here, isn't it? Oh yeah, I said to twitch your hand. Yes. Nice gross detail. But, uh, yeah, grizzly and gives you an idea of what you might be able to expect. And then I added in the blood coming out of the back of the car as well to imply what happened with the daughter. And to be fair, like, he drifts on the road there because of, uh, he's feeling conflicted about the current relationships, right? He's, yeah, he's not exactly on the ball. It's arguable that is what caused the crash to happen. Certainly. There was a scene here that we actually filmed got cut out quite early on when she wakes up in the hospital. She comes out into the corridor. We shot a scene where there's a crawler scuttling around at the end of the corridor in the shadows. And it was kind of, I don't even remember from the script or not. I think maybe it was, but the implication was like, just like here that it goes dark and she turned around and she saw this like shape scuttling around on the floor. And I guess it was all to do with like, well, these demons in the mind, but I thought it made it too that effect. Kind of what she's reacting to there. It kind of makes it too implicit that it's stuff going on in her head. Yeah. The idea that like none of this ended, like none of it is actually happening and it's all just like her, you know, because there's a lot being made of this visual. Yeah, yeah. This is all in the corridor at Pinewood Studios. We had to take down all the carry on movie posters off the walls and make it look like a hospital. It really does look like a hospital though. It does. Yeah. The lino floors and everything. People in uniform say go a long way. It looks like a kind of Victorian English hospital, that's for sure. I think there's always something more compelling about just a very strained cast, you know, just a small group of people, but you get to really delve into each of their characters and like what they do and how they relate to each other becomes a massive focal point then. I certainly took that from John Carpenter on The Thing and Alien and such like, and then Assault on Precinct 13 as well, which is one of my favourites. But he took that from Howard Hawks who like to do films with these people in these situations. So I love that. I love that kind of dynamism. Obviously, we just passed the Trituga National Park sign. She's a reference to Deliverance. There's a lot of Deliverance homages here. Oh, there it is. And she's shining references with the overhead shots of the car. All the favourites. All the favourites. But all of this stuff was shot in the Scotland or, you know, like parked behind Pioneer Studios and the Appalachian Mountains Hall. As a Brit, like it does definitely look like, you know, British roads and British countryside and stuff. But I mean, even me, you know, as the American here, everything from the little bullet holes on the rural, you know, signs to of course the left-hand driving car. Yeah, I didn't know where it was. If you asked me where it was shot, I'd be like, kind of Appalachians, I guess, you know, maybe the Northwest, you know, someplace like that. It's almost like home. That's the balance, I presume. Neil, you're always trying to get it to a point where it is plausible. It is viable. You don't need to make it like extreme and make sure you nail everything, but make sure you can get the audience there, sort of thing. That's trying to sell it as something that it isn't. I mean, this log cabin in the woods, this is, it's called Birkenstead, just outside of London, just randomly found a log cabin in the woods. I was like, oh, that'll do, because, you know, we're going to go to build one. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I look at it and go, well, let's paint it now, because it just looks autumn, autumn England, but I guess I know it. That's a trouble. I can't associate myself from knowing exactly where it is. One tries. And the other thing is, is that inside that log cabin, there was literally just one room. He dressed about three times as being the living room and two different bedrooms, by adding in a couple of extra walls and stuff like that. Filmmaking magic, eh? Tricks. It's all down to Simon Boll's of production design. I was just a genius. But we can make the caves work. We can make this cabin work God damn it. Yeah. That is very cozy looking. We take a lot of time during the early portion of the film building all of these characters. What was a thought process behind slowing down and focusing in on these people and their interactions with each other? I like a slow build for something like this. The films that I like are slow builds, The Thing and Alien and The Exorcist and stuff like that. Take that, take that time. It was definitely something I learned from dog soldiers of like, people are going to care. If you just, if it's just like bullet fodder or whatever it is, characters that line up to be killed. I want people to feel their death. So I want people to feel so let's take the time to get to know these girls, care about them a bit before we start butchering them. Yeah. Well, they're all interesting. Like this is the thing. Like they don't really come across as just like stock characters that like, oh, I can tell this person's going to get killed right away or whatever. Like they're all, they've got enough personality and enough depth to them that like, yeah, okay, quite invested in each of them. Like it's not predictable and like an eye rolling kind of way. It's like, oh, you're the this archetype. You're the this. You'll die first. You'll die second. You'll die. You'll be the coward. You'll be, you're the horny one. We're really kind of straight away from more obvious kind of stereotypes, I guess for female characters in this kind of film. Thank you. I really like, I had to fight with some of the execs, you know, a little bit on that of like, you know, you're like, why do they have to wear like woody jumpers and stuff like that? Kind of not like be stripping off at this point. I like they wanted more stereotypical stuff, more like pajama party business, you know. This is what the people want. I suppose it's kind of a rare thing as well to have like a movie like this where it is an all female cast. You know, I suppose it's not been done a huge number of times and you know, it's done in such a way here that it just feels completely natural like they're all friends. It makes sense for them to be here in this position, doing this stuff. Well, I did a lot of research into the the climbing and caving kind of food before writing it. And it's like, yeah, that there's a lot of women out there doing it. I mean, this is 20 years ago now. There was then, there certainly is now. It's an international community. It's everybody does it and there's groups of women out there you know, doing it. So I was like, why shouldn't it be a group of women? It can all be mates and they can get on like mates and not have to be bitching and you know, all this kind of stuff behind each other's back. Can just be normal people. Yeah. Yeah. They drink beer and they could fart and whatever the fuck it is that they do. Ladies don't fart. My mom told me just before we had the first overt reference to Juno's necklace. And I will say it's impressive. We're about 13 minutes in and you've set the foundation for almost everything because as much as there's no stereotypes because I totally agree with that. We've still got pieces of each of them that are going to be relevant once the story moves on being Juno's already been set up as slightly distant yet. The sort of action woman of the lot which is an interesting dynamic to keep pushing especially that she's the one that gets everybody to do all of the extreme sports all the fun outings. It seems that she uses that to avoid talking about more serious stuff especially being there's an affair behind all of it. Then of course, we know exactly what our main character's going through. Then the protege to Juno, right? She's already made a reference to how she's a go-getter. She likes the risks. She likes Juno. There's a really obscure deliverance reference here which you can't see very well but it's all to do with the fact that Beth here is lying with her arm twisted around the back of her head. And if you remember the way that one of the characters is found in deliverance that he has his arm bent around the back of his head. It's been a while since I've seen deliveries but I think I know what you mean. Okay, Ronnie Cox. He's got a dislocated arm around the back of his head. Anyway, this moment. That was a nice little jump scare. Great little jump scare but that came about in the script phase because people were saying, well, you know, it doesn't, the first part of the movie doesn't read like a horror movie. We need something. So I thought of putting a jump scare in there and I think that one actually works really well. Oh yeah, thematically. I mean it's very, very appropriate. It also sets up the medication like beside a medication. It really helps get you in her head. It's physically to speak. The benchmark is for stuff like this. Like the first 15 minutes of a movie should establish your main character is your general setup, your stakes and any of the sort of plot threads that you're going to pursue going forwards. And we are just at the 15 minute mark and we've essentially got all of that now. Yeah, I think so. I mean, maybe not the stakes yet because we haven't seen, you know, I've gone down the cave. But we kind of know why they're here if you know what I mean. Like they're going to be doing this thing. There's danger in rock climbing anyway, right? And cave exploring and spelunking and stuff. If anyone didn't know, which by the way, I fully recommend people going into this movie without knowing what is going to happen. That's like the best way to do it because the crawlers, man, the reveal of those guys. Yeah, up to this point, you're going to assume, I guess, that something's going to go horribly wrong when they go exploring a cave. Yeah, one way or another. Damn, she's flexible. Yep. Yeah, she's a dancer and whatever and she was like, you know, I can do this. I was like, great, let's get in the movie. This cost us nothing. It's just great to see them dicking around like this and being kind of goofy and like it just kind of feels really natural. Like they've got a good camaraderie already. They feel like real people. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, you're going to be spending, you know, in these movies, you'll be spending what, 90 minutes, two hours, sometimes more with characters and they don't bother to set aside a bit of time to tell us who they are and why we should care. Yeah, it's crazy. A lot of movies don't even set motivations. Yeah, they're just here. Why does anyone want to do anything? It's like, who cares? They got to get killed. You're like, oh, OK. Because there is a running sentiment that like horror films, especially of this kind, where it's like a group of people and they're all going to get killed one by one, so to speak, that you don't need to do much characterization, but I've always felt, and especially with this movie proving it too, that the more characterization you do, the more impactful the deaths will be. Yeah, well, also, because the characterization drives some of the choices and the things that happen exactly because of who certain characters are. So, yeah, I think it's absolutely essential. I think it was worth spending this time getting to know them and like them, because it will pay off. I think as well with like the sort of cheaper, like nastier slasher flicks, like it was almost a case of having unlikable characters in your movie, so you didn't feel bad when you saw them get killed in a bunch of gory ways. Whereas with this, it's like, OK, you're taking a bit more seriously because these people who feel like real human beings, that you're kind of invested in them and you don't want them to die necessarily, so it means more when they start getting bumped off. What's funny about that is that if you want an audience to feel indifferent about a death or even happy that a particular character, like an asshole character dies or something, still accentuate that with character writing. It's always available as a tool. Feels almost like a waste when you don't. I feel like there are a ton of little micro expressions in this scene between each of these characters that give you sort of an indication of each of their connections to one another. Yeah, it was like trying to set up a lot of stuff, like the watch that we just set up and then it was just the relationship between the sisters and then the Irish girl who's like bought by, you know, is an adrenaline junkie and is kind of bought by the tourist trap aspect of the caves and it's also hinted that there's kind of a relationship between her and Juno but it's never a plus. There's also little references and things like that going on all the time. How do you feel about the notion that writing is essentially problem solving? Like you want to get these girls in a cave with monsters that have never been found before and you're like, well, how can I make that plausible in our world? How can no one have ever been there before or at least that we know of and stuff? Yeah, right. It was researching and applying that to the writing of like understanding while there are plenty of caves out there that nobody ever been to before and the idea that if you go down a cave first you get to name it and things like that is all part of the research and then there's the notion being that at some point Juno had found this place or you know and scouted it without actually really fully exploring it but she scouted it a bit to bring them back here to for her own kind of satisfying her own ego I suppose. What would you say there is an element of she really did think I would? Of course, she brought them there she maybe brought them there to kill them all. Oh no! You're making an idiot. For Gil Silver what she's been up to a great way to get rid of Sarah. So It feels like overcompensation on Juno's part like to try and make up for things I feel like this is the great but that really it's something that she thoroughly enjoys because that does come up right like Sarah asking I think it is that's also with Juno it's also a case that I think she ultimately her ego is stronger than her desire to make up for what she did wrong. Oh yeah I mean the fact that she had the affair right? Yeah But you know she's happy to lead them into danger if it's gonna help her. I find Juno like really interesting character especially later on when shit starts to go down I mean she's kind of my favorite switches from being because she switches from being he wrote a villain like from moment to moment this is a really strong layered complicated character which you'd love to see more of in film and you know we'll get there but the payoff you do give to her is not something you see in stories really ever. That hat there supposed to be an Indiana Jones reference? No definitely I was a touch of the Indiana Jones in the hat for sure. This is the happiest the characters can be so little Indiana Jones hat makes us feel good. Yeah adventure. And also like we missed a beat before but that one of the characters basically lists off a whole bunch of shit that can happen when you go on caving in terms of like how it can kill you how it can drive you mad how it can... You can get dehydration disorientation claustrophobia panic attacks paranoia hallucinations causes delusions all this kind of stuff and basically everything that she says happens later in the film. Pretty good use of the green green I assume their big goal. Some big piece of green. Yeah. It's laid on the ground. It does look very good. It's rare to find holes that big in Britain unfortunately. They must be cold. So this was literally just across the road from the cabin but we can't tell. That's the miniature the background there that it's a cave. Is this miniature? It looks pretty good. Yeah. It was like 15 foot tall. It wasn't exactly small. That's obviously set. I think there's another shot in a second of the miniature. Do you remember how the water was created with the miniature? I remember being it's not water, right? Salt. Salt, yeah. That's the miniature there. Really? I had no idea. That's great. Wow. I had no idea. Interesting. All these little... Really old school tricks. Really old school tricks. Yeah. Well this is the stuff I love about filmmaking. You have like several forms of recording this whole section and they're all pieced together and they create like one understandable progression of things which is really strong. The way your mind can... Like this, yeah. This is the shot that this is the quote-unquote miniature but it looks just real. It just looks real. They did such a fantastic job on it. It'll always look good. Holly, we do this safely in order following my leader. Okay? Oh, very adventurous and gung-ho of her. Come down so quickly. Down the route. It's kind of interesting. I didn't really think about it at the time but it was also sort of one of the first... Not not the first but to incorporate the use of like the video camera and the night vision stuff. Yeah. This is back in 2005 or before when you made it maybe. So yeah, that is... That's going back. This would be a round of the... Well just after the Blair Witch Project. Yes. After Blair Witch for sure. And this is before everyone was carrying around phones with flashlights and recording stuff. So you know those are... Before record. The fucking great film as well. Oh, I've heard very good things about record. The Bats is kind of an interesting... Like not only could it be like a jump scare in this moment but kind of a bit of foreshadowing to the nature of the crawlers and how they navigate their world. It is, yeah. The sound of these... Yeah, the way the bats work and they're surviving the dark and things. So... Is that a shot? Is something satisfying about that? It's the pick of destiny there. Well, when you've got a film that's assembled with care you start to think, oh, everything has a purpose. Every shot has a function. I'm not just having my time wasted. There are... There's a reason for everything. It's all put together with care. These caves look really cool but it's also now we get to into the portion of the film where all of the lighting is more or less attempting to be diagetic, right? Like torches, flashlights. It's what came out of the actual caving experience and a memory of mine from when I was a kid. I went to a school trip. I think I don't know, must be like 12 or something like that. I was taking on a school trip down a mine. At some point you're down one of those mine and the guide said, okay, I want everybody to turn your lights off and you all turn your torches off and it was like the first time I experienced pitch black. Like, it's not like turning your lights off at home. It's like there's just nothing and you can wave your hand right in front of your eyes. You can't see a thing. And then he says, by the way, don't wander off because there's like a thousand foot drop about 50 feet over there. This is like a bunch of school kids like you'll never be allowed to do that today. But we were all like, we're not going anywhere. Thank you very much. They're really stuck in my mind this notion of pitch black and how to utilize this for this film. So I said like, I've seen movies set in caves before and they always have like random shafts of light poking out of nowhere or they have some glow that's just lights of everything. I want to somehow do this whereby only light sources that we have in the cave or what they take with them. And it could be a lighter. It could be a torch. It could be a flare. It could be snap lights. It could be whatever it is. Anything else should be pitch black. We're really stuck with that as much as we could trying to make sure that we established light sources for each scene. I think there's only one that we kind of cheated a little bit on but that's later on. I have to say I really appreciate the sensibility because a lot of films don't care. They're just like, eh, we'll light the whole place up. It's fine if they only have a message. Make it look pretty. Yeah. Yeah. It really accentuates the horror, doesn't it? Because dark is dark and it can get really dark in this film. Like, I mean, look at this scene. Like, look at this shot. Yeah. And it's just literally like the only light is what was coming off her torch. It's bouncing off rocks or water or whatever. And that's great. And the great thing about using the sets over again is that the actors really shun their lights in exactly the same place every time. So the fact that you're standing in the same set as the previous scene, you just have no idea. Well, yeah. Not only does it look really great but it also just, it ties into what we're talking about, right? All of the little tricks to essentially get as much out of what you had as possible. Like, what better way to reuse sets than to have them be dimly lit. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It enabled us to cheat quite a lot. Did you find yourself having to hold back a bit on wanting to drop roller clues or did you put in as many as you were actually wanting to do, like, from the get-go? I think everything was in there that I wanted and it was just like a little hint here and a little hint there. I mean, like, she found sort of bloody finger marks on the prints down there. I don't even know what that means. It's like, you put this idea in here, oh, bloody fingerprints. Like, what does that mean? It's like, was that a crawler made those marks or was it a previous victim or something like that? It's like, what is that? Nothing good. Nothing good, yeah. It's certainly nothing that we chose to explain beyond that. And I think it's nice not explaining everything all the time. I will figure things out as they go along. You know, give them credit as a viewer that they can piece things together and sort of speculate on their own terms. Yeah, absolutely. The real crawler appearance doesn't happen until like 45 minutes from the end of the film or 40 minutes from the end of the film. Yeah, there is a long build up to it. It's a remarkable amount of restraint, I would say, to hold off for that long. But I think that was a really beneficial choice because you just get all of these little clues. And a lot of time where things are normal, you know, relatively speaking. It accentuates the horror of that. Relatively normal. But it's also just trying to establish that the cave itself is very dangerous and unpleasant. And we always start distracting the audience. Yeah. So that cave there that she just crawled into was quite specifically designed, talked about on the making of, but it was specifically designed to look like a vagina. Like a slime as well? Yeah, the slime as well. There was a notion and it's certainly being discussed in many different things. But it was somebody, it was actually Emma Cleeseby who played Megan and dog soldiers who read the script and she said, this cave thing, it's basically like a journey through like a female body. You know, you have all that you go into the mouth and down the throat and all this kind of stuff. And there's like the concept of rebirth at the end. There's like, there's a stomach cave, which is all full of dead animals. There's like, she termed it the menstrual cave, which was like the womb because it had all the blood, the blood cakes, stuff like that. And I just thought that was fascinating. And we started applying that to making of it. It was like, well, also like taking a leaf out of alien, which like, you know, some of the, when they go into the derelict spacecraft, like the openings to the ship are patently, like the big vaginas and it's full of eggs. You know, hanging around with that kind of stuff. Just, it's just fun. You know, it's just kind of fun details. You can't really tell watching the movie. And then a little trick here for getting the camera into this tunnel to do a tracking shot of her crawling along the tunnel there. We literally like screwed the camera to the end of a plank of wood, like shoved the camera and plank of wood into the hole and then dragged it out a bit in front of the actor. And it like, it worked a fucking treat. Hey, if it works, it works. That's the funny thing, right? Sometimes it comes across probably while you're doing it as a nightmare. But then when you've done it, you're like, that's pretty good. Problem solved. Yeah. A leading moment is after they leave this cave, they cut back to apple that one of them was eating, sitting on a rock. And this hand just comes in and like takes the apple and you hear like a crunch sound. But when I cut it out, because it was just too, it was too much too soon. Too obvious, yeah. Yeah, because technically speaking, the only reference we've got so far is something that you, there's a stuntman or crew member in the shot when they were just arriving into the sort of big portion of the cave and you ended up... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we left it exactly as it is. If you see it, you see it. If you don't, you don't. But yes, there's a guy's face in the shadows or in the props guys or something. We just happened to be standing there. But ends up working out, okay, right? Because like most people won't be able to see exactly what it is, but they'll see something move. And they'll be like, wait a minute. Yeah, that's fine, don't worry about it. I will become the product. This scene is just lovely. Like, I think it's easy to... Lovely is just how I'd explain it, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I'm not particularly claustrophobic myself, but like, and I appreciate this idea of just being caught in this really narrow underground passage, like so far from help that no one's going to be able to get to you. I'm just getting jammed. And you take the chance of not only to create this horror sequence, but to bond further these two characters to let the audience know how much these two will be invested in each other, right? Yeah, absolutely, that these two are close friends. Another thing I wanted to try and achieve was a sense that we weren't cheating the camera angles too much, like the cameras. I wanted to feel like the camera was in the cave with them all the time. It wasn't stuck through a hole in the wall. So it felt like, you know, we were squeezing the camera in with the actors to make it even more claustrophobic. Because you see the dust in the air and everything. It's like, you can tell it's right in amongst it. I mean, that was a big thing with this was like, I figured going in, making this film, why don't I make it claustrophobic? But I figured maybe like three people out of 10 suffered from claustrophobia. And the response that I got to the film suggests it's more like nine out of 10. Like everybody got fucked up. Well, I got a hand at two minutes. I think it's the way the way this scene's created. There's something disturbing about the idea because especially the darkness surrounding the portion that they're even in. The whole thing is lit by the two torches. That's it. Yeah. And so it goes where it goes. My face is not, if it doesn't hit the walls, it's black. When the wall moves, they're a recognition of the change in tone. Here's your oh shit moment. Yeah. He's like, no, no time to act chill anymore. You have to actually get out. Good use of music too. It comes in, it's a good sound that comes in at the right moment, I feel. And otherwise fairly sub dude soundtrack. Absolutely. Yeah. I was kind of, I really liked the use of the breaths, the panics, breathing, all kind of stuff for that scene. And then the birthday cake visual comes back for the second time. Five candles. The thing with the birthday cake is she was going to have her birthday party and it was going to be her fifth birthday party or something. So she's, she's, she has five candles on there. But I think at the very end of the film, when you see the cake again, it's got six candles on it. This reminds me of aliens when the way they're integrated into the walls, when the marines first get down into the height. And you would, you would never know just looking at it. This scene, in order to have continuity right every time. So at the beginning of each take, you have to blast an air can of air mortar full of this Fuller's Earth stuff into the set at the beginning of every single take. So that as the scene went on, it would progressively like clear, just to have the continuity. But I don't think you can do that anymore. I think that Fuller's Earth stuff has been banned because it's, it's like a carcinogen or something. Well, love of the craft. Survived. Yeah, they're right. Yeah, they're, they're all right. And look what we got. We got the descent. So it was worth it. Also, I think that the stakes at this point become very clear. Like it's really, really easy to grasp, right? They're in a cave that they nobody found before, which means nobody's going to come rescue them and they're stuck. So they have no choice but to press on, right? To descend further into the depth of the cave. Absolutely. And I hear, here we go. I think it's actually just. Yeah. This is the, what I would consider the reveal sort of. But yeah, I really think this is well done. Oh, that's so good. There is. Same shot that coming back. It's going. Yeah, so good. It's subtle. Her reaction to it is like perfectly natural. Like what the hell, did I just see what I just saw? That kind of thinking, the imagination kicking in. As she goes on and gets more clues, she starts to sort of piece it together, right? Each of them individually is like, huh. But then, you know, more information comes along and then it starts to paint the picture, right? There was somebody down here in this cave. It's also fun playing around with, you know, the one who starts to see stuff also happens to be the one who may or may not be, you know, be kind of crazy. Who's on medication? Stuff like that. So then, you know, she's, well, she's the, um, the unreliable narrator. Yeah. So yeah, it's another set which we used a few times, but it's a different style of rock formation and things like that. Trying to create the bottomless chasm. If you have a clear image of these sorts of visuals, like this particular massive drop before you made the film. Yeah. No, absolutely. I had, I had an idea of what I wanted. I'm not sure how to achieve it, but there's also a, well, how can we show it's a really massive drop if it's pitch black? So then it was the idea, well, yeah, let's throw a rock over the edge of one of them. It's a few seconds or something like that. And it goes, goes, um, you hear the noise. Like I worked it out of like half of all that actually is. And it's like, it's an insanely high amount of, you know, that rock falls a long way in a short time. So, you know, it's like a skyscraper down there. It really is striking the sort of red and black contrast in these scenes, like, and especially these wide shots, like with all of the markings in the wall, like it's a really striking visual. Yeah. I love the red light. The use of the view, we use the flares an awful lot. Makes it very hellish. I think it's, I think it was really interesting that that was pretty cool that it shows the bottomless pit, but the idea that she starts to see the crawlers as the team starts to fall apart. Yeah. Something that this scene accomplishes, like aside from being a really tense moment, is it shows just how competent these characters are. They're quite good at what they're doing here, but it's still very precarious. The sort of rock climbing element of it isn't just to get them in. We see this, it's relevant basically throughout the film. I really wanted to incorporate, incorporate all that kind of stuff. It achieves so much. We did cut it down a little bit, because I guess you can see that she's carrying a drill hanging from a belt. And we want to, you know, I did film all this detail of them, did the side and drilling into the rock and putting in the toms and all this kind of stuff. So we definitely whittled it down a bit to get rid of all that stuff. This is the first clue here that there are, the people have come down here before. Yeah, no one ever heard about it. Wow, exactly. It was a great trope in horror movies, like the previous expedition that fell full of whatever things lurking in there. You know, you pick up little clues about what happened to them. Such a great thing. Yeah. Such a great effect. Something I appreciate is that it's a, like it's not acknowledged at this moment, you know, putting the pieces together. There's evidence that people have been down here, but nobody's heard of this cave before. Like that starts to become more apparent later on, right? As you sort of get more clues about people coming down here, piecing it together, it's not super overt. Yeah, well, it's followed on a foreign conversation that states that if you were the first down a cave, you get to name it. So what if this thing, the cave is unexplored, then what happened to these guys? Exactly. There's certainly been some discussions of, you know, could you do a dissent, like prequel about those, you know, these first explorers. The problem with that, as with any prequel, is you kind of know how it ends to a degree. Yeah. Those you can try and throw a few twists and turns. One twist and turn could be that the crawlers are the first people who try to come here. Oh my God. There was a movie I reviewed, one's called Deathline, and it's set in the London Underground, and it's like... In the Gap. Yeah, in the Gap. And it's like people who were excavating a new sort of section of the underground back in the turn of the century, and there was a cave in, and they got trapped. And what you see now is like the descendants of those original people, and they've sort of descended into cannibalism, and they're basically just like beasts at this point. I just like the idea of, you know, these people trapped so far from civilization, they just basically turn into animals over time. Well, I mean, that's a fun one anyway, because they're not really, they're not trapped as such, they chose to stay there. Yeah, kind of. They prey on people late at night on the tube stations, they grab them and snatch them and drag them into the dark and stuff like that. So they're kind of like crawlers. Yeah, and there's literally like one left by the end, and he's like kind of simultaneously horrible and kind of pitiful at the same time. And I think it's a great thing to play within a horror movie. You do wonder if anyone's made the video, you know, the crawlers did nothing wrong. There'll be a video essay out there. This is an argument. Oh, no, totally. Again, I was discussed when we were making the film is that, you know, is this actually, look at it from a different point of view, it's like a home invasion movie. This girl is basically invading the crawler's space. You know, they were living their life peacefully, being a few deer and stuff like that, but there's no indication that it preyed on people that much. Well, until they find the skulls, right? Well, later on, yeah. But a lot of animals, there are a lot of animal skulls. Well, in theory, some of the skulls could just be crawler skulls, I guess. Yeah, in dog soldiers. Oh, this injury. Oh, son of a... Oh. In this entire scene with this, you know, in this canyon here, this gap, it's been very reddish. It's very nice on the eyes. It still gives the feeling that it's dark. It's not a bright light. It's kind of, it's kind of a reserved light. It doesn't overpower you. Oh, definitely, yeah. That's brutal. I love what you're doing in this scene as well, because it's like you're showing them doing, like, pretty impressive things physically, but like, they're never, they never verge into like, superhuman territory, like, they're never capable of like, things that, you know, are clearly ridiculous. I'm very keen on maintaining that, that, you know, they fall and they get injured. As you say, there's nothing superhuman about these girls at all. You're really keen on maintaining that. When she gets cut, it fucking hurts. Yeah. And for how claustrophobic it is, you don't, it doesn't feel unpleasant as a viewing experience. It still feels like you can tell what's going on, you get a clear progression of what's happening, you can tell who is who. It's not like a blurry film or a film that's so dark you can't tell what's happening. Very well shot in that regard with respect to the audience. Yeah, it was trying to find that balance of making it dark but not confusing. Yeah, it's never confusing. It's kind of interesting that this feels like, you know, giving, giving sort of a glimmer of hope of, oh, wow, there might be another exit to this cave and it's really not login until we start seeing the crawlers. Yeah, well, we take that hope away. And it achieves like if this is artwork, who made it and when and what happened to them. And trying to put some context in the crawlers themselves. We described, not in the film, but I described them outside of the film as like, you know, they're the caveman that didn't leave the cave and evolve outside. I think there's a really solid idea and I do quite like your decision to not make that so explicit and over the characters theorize that sort of, that scene is in almost all horror movies with a monster of some kind. Music here is our very thing, ask, isn't it? Yes. There he is. Yeah, there it is. And save for like the 47 minute mark. What's the thing, right? If you hadn't been paying enough attention, that might be the first time you go, wait a minute. Yeah. Oh my God. It's just kind of there, but it's like, what is it doing? Is it listening? Is it stalking them? Well, we already set up earlier. The hole is kind of the renegade, it goes in fast, but not very cautiously. Yeah. I think giving the first like two injuries, being from just exploring the cave, emphasizes just how dangerous the environment is and then throwing the crawlers on top. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it starts to feel so close. I wanted to try and choose kind of injuries that you could feel the pain just by looking at them. So then the rope burn through the palm of the hand if it was a good one. Oh, that sound. Yummy. So close to that daylight too. Oh, if only. If only. If only it would daylight. So yeah, again, that was something that based on fact or whatever that there's some kinds of phosphorus and rocks that will glow and looks a bit like daylight and stuff like that. That's not meant to be daylight. So at this point, they're like two miles underground or something. So I love her understatement of like, I think I hurt my leg. Yeah. And then you see that. At that point, everybody's like, oh my God. Yeah, I guess like when you're in shock like that, you don't register it immediately or maybe you don't want to acknowledge it. So all but I'm not quite sure what's wrong with it. Yeah. I think actually the actor of seeing really makes it hit home. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I know when I was in like Boy Scouts and Search and Rescue and stuff, we were often told, yeah, don't let them look at their wounds if you can help it. Sometimes it makes them all panic and whatnot. And I would point out this like, although I said, you know, this was all shot on stages, it was shot on stages in January where there's no heating on the stages. And so they were absolutely freezing. So, and they were constantly being gouged in water. So like every time we did a take of this, we'd have to get them off and wrap them in thermal blankets because Nora J. Noona was lying in the puddle at the beginning with their leg broken, like, you know, shaking with cold. Yeah, it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience for them. Yeah, you don't want them to actually die from like the thermia on set while you're making the movie. But again, like as much as I'm sure it was probably quite a miserable experience for them having to do stuff like this, it all adds to the authenticity of it. Oh yeah, you buy it 100%. Absolute troopers, you know, up to your actors. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, real troopers. So what you can't see very well is the name Oswald written on the helmet. That's an in-joke in all my movies, the Eddie Oswald character from Dog Soldiers. And here, every film I've done there's been an Eddie Oswald reference. That's pretty good. Oswald that ends well. Are there any spoons in this by any chance? There's no spoons in it, just Oswald. That does not look like a fun day out. No. There's something about bone for me that always gets me more in the flesh down here. This was not on the brochure. I don't want to ever see my bones, you know. No. There's supposed to be inside me. Yeah, there's a skeleton in me somewhere and he could stay there, you know. Oh, this shit is so memorable. The pitch black behind her, perfect. Subtle shimmer of the water. Oh, that's good. It's so normal, you know. Like this is just how it would happen. It's so mundane in a sense and that makes it so believable. Yeah, there's not a grand entrance for it or anything. It's just like a glimpse of briefly. Yeah, not there. Just stumbled upon its watering hole kind of thing and it's like seeing some creature in the wild. Yeah, it's so unceremonious. You don't see it for very long either. Was that something you debated about, whether you wanted to hold on it for a little bit longer? Yes, I mean, I didn't want to hold on it longer. I wanted it at the bare minimum. Right. I didn't want to go for any kind of a close-up. I wanted it to her point of view so like it should be at the far end of the torch beam and be kind of obscure. It's just enough to register. There's something there. It looks humanoid. It's moving. Like, oh, fuck. All kinds of tensions building between all the characters. And I wanted to have a logic to it as well. It's like, okay, one of the characters thinks that she sees something, but hang on. I was a girl who was lying here with a broken leg. Yeah. We have to go priorities straight here and she's the priority. And we've got to deal with this first. Yeah, you have to understand the other characters are dealing with all that blood. The bone is screaming. Then someone's coming up to them saying, I saw a guy. It's like, sure, okay. Sure you did. All right. That's the only things to deal with right now. Especially when we're all having a tough day. As you pointed out earlier, listing all of the psychological effects of going down into a really deep cave. Yeah, that people do hallucinate and think they see all kinds of shit in the darkness at the best of times. Yeah, someone off set, just right out of shot blowing on the candle. Pretty much, yeah. I think in the credits, he shows up the candleblower. He was, I saw him in the credits. He did a good job. He did a good job. I hope he gets more work. I mean, the sound is so good. You know, it's just so believable as a cave because the material you said was like a styrofoam sort of thing. So having the water hit all of the material, it really does sound like it's landing on rock. Oh, it just lasts. Making it so unpleasant for them all the time. And here it is. The Bone Zone. The Bone Zone. Ah, Jinx. I like how you gave it a name, The Bone Zone. It is the zone of bones. It makes the most sense. Was there ever a point on set where any of the actors were like, fucking hell, like, this is just shit. Like, I'm really cold and tired and I'm not enjoying myself today. Like, did any of them have trouble with it? They didn't, actually. I didn't hear a complaint from any one of them. Nice. Pretty legendary. They were all... Yeah, that's impressive. Yeah, they were all so committed. I mean, based on what I saw from the behind-the-scenes stuff, it seemed like everyone was so committed and into the project that, you know, it's easy, I suppose, if it is miserable work that you know you're working towards making something that really is great. Yeah, everyone understands. You see the enthusiasm of everyone. It's not like people... Yeah. This is all in favor of... I'm a pretty great artwork. Oh-ho-ho-ho. Yeah. The story behind this one is... I think this was probably, like, the fourth or fifth take. That is so good. That is such a good jumpscare. It's an amazing jumpscare. One of my favorites. So, yeah, so there is... And it's been, like, kind of ripped off in a whole bunch of other stuff since then. One of the most notable ones being Cloverfield literally does it identical with the infrared and the thing in the background behind one of the characters. It's like, yeah. So for that, like, I'd kept the creatures completely hidden from the cast. They didn't even meet the actors playing the creatures. So the first time they ever had an encounter with a crawler or what it looked like, we never... They never saw the designs. They never saw anything was in that shot on the first take of that shot. And it was a fun idea to do because it really built up tension on set within the performances. But on the first take, they literally just ran screaming off the set. That's not even acting there. It's the actual genuine terror. Yeah. Also on the first maybe four takes of it, I had the crawler, like, reaching toward her and it just... Something about it just didn't look right. It just didn't look scary. And I just said, just don't reach to her. Just stand there with, like, your head tilted if you're kind of listening or something like that. And that's the one we use because it just looks so freaky that he's just standing there behind her. Nothing. Then they just bring it to the scene. And it's all practical. It's all practical blood. Oh, it looks bloody, brilliant. It looks so good. There's something that happens there as she's screaming and then the scream turns into, like, a blood curdled scream. Do you want to understand that? It's the actress' idea because that's a really great addition, the fact that the blood would have gone into her throat and so it would have changed the way the scream sounds. Scream, yeah. And all the actors playing the crawlers, they're very acrobatic, almost, but in an animalistic kind of way. It's not like Cirque du Soleil. It's more like a spider hopping around or like a creature, you know? A nimble creature. We did a lot of rehearsal with the actors playing the crawlers and modeling themselves on spider movements was really, it was very much a part of the character at the beginning was how spiders move, how they're very still and then suddenly they scuttle and they're really fast and then they go still again. And I just thought that that somewhere moving was just really fucking creepy. I love the light in here as well. Don't over expose the creatures. The low-mild light called by the shadows. And this fight scene was like completely uncorographed. I basically said, the crawler was like, your job is to try and bite her throat. Your job is to stop him. Go. Let's go. I just feel it was brutal. Yeah, absolutely. It felt so much more raw and organic. Yeah, messy in a way. It's just, yeah, there's no... Oh, tragic. So this was one of those moments where I really like playing with Juno character of like everybody else has run for their lives. Juno's there. She's fighting this fucker. She's being really heroic. And you're like, yes, go Juno, and then suddenly the other one is like, fuck. And look at the actress. They're both phenomenal here. That's going to be important later. Yeah. And just the way that it all arises in the middle of this really intense fight, this brutal fight, and then, you know, like while she's still caught up essentially in that chaos and not really... Yeah, how do you deal with this? Like not really grasping herself that this happens. And yeah, what do you do? Yeah, because it's the thing you don't see too often in movies like that friendly fire aspect of it. Like in the middle of a chaotic battle you could quite easily end up nailing one of your friends by accident just because it's so... You can't see properly. Part of what's so admirable at the opening of it is she's trying to defend the body. That's her goal. And their objective is just to drag it away so they can eat it. Yeah. That's all they're after. So you're so with her and then you're like, oh no. And she backs off into the shadows. Yeah, though our teams are splitting three. So yeah, then it became a challenge of like, well, how do we know who we're with? So who's the idea? Well, we'll give these the green snap light so that we know any time we're green, well, with these two. And then the one is fire. Well, Sarah becomes fire after she does the video camera thing. And then in this case of like, well, why can we hide the creatures? Yeah, it gives you the impression they can always be around. Just waiting, lurking. Like you don't get that safe feeling. You're very much on edge and there's tension. Yeah. And you're on their turf now. Yeah. Very much on their turf. You really do get that sense. I mean, it's been so long since we've been outside. It seems like this is just the world now. That was actually another note from one of the producers or the producer when writing it was like, I think he got to about this stage in the script. He was like, we need some scene outside the cave. We need to give the audience a break. And my response was like, absolutely not. Like, you're not spill, but it didn't let the audience off the boat at Jaws. You know, once they're on the orca, they're on the orca. We don't get off the boat. In Alien, you don't get to a scene outside an astromo. It's like you're in it. So I was like, no, we keep them in there with them all the time. No relief. This is what they're experiencing, right? Yeah. And what are you going to cut to? I mean... Yeah, like some guys in a control room like trying to mount a rescue mission for them or something. And ironically, yes, that's what a lot of movies would do. They would have the team up top who's looking for them so that every few minutes, oh, it's your nice to be up here in the sunshine again. Oh, we wouldn't want anyone to get stressed out. My objective by this point of the film was like, it's just going to punish the audience from now on. It's going to get more and more relentless. So that slow build pay off would be worth it. You'd be ready for it because we didn't go all the way to 11 in the first five minutes of the film. But we save it for the last 45 minutes of the film and the last 40 minutes of the film where it just goes apeshit. Well, that's another thing I think this film achieves very well is that no one feels protected. Nothing feels safe. Any one of them could go at any time, putting that somebody like Beth or whatever could end up getting a pickaxe through her neck. And then Lee is just like, okay, everybody's expendable here. Was there anything to having particular colors per the groups? What did this sort of just make out this way? The choice of colors was not specific. Only that they did have some defining color group or at least this one. But green, it could have been blue, but I think this green feels a bit more, you know, icky compared to the red. Standard blue, like color, you know, pretty believable. My read on the color scheme is that the reason why Sarah's red is so dominant is like the descent essentially into madness, like into the depths of like psychological hell, in a sense. Meanwhile, the other group and when Juno rejoins them is green because she's sort of on a path to potential redemption, like as she becomes more heroic and more of a fighter. That's my read of the color scheme. And I really like it as an idea. Also, with blue would have suggested daylight. So I didn't want to suggest any kind of daylight. So. Oh, right. Interesting. Well, yeah, because green is not a particularly common light, lighting color, you know. I should probably mention it, too. The crawlers look fucking great. They really do. We haven't mentioned it. It's a good creature design. That seems so good. Fantastic design. They've just got enough human elements so you can see like, well, okay, I can see what they began as. And this is what they've devolved into because they're in a cave. They can't see, you know, it's dark all the time. You understand how they function pretty quickly. What were your main inspirations for the designs? The things like the master from Salem's loss and obviously Nosferatu. Oh, I can see that a lot. Yeah. That pale skin, the ears. But trying to, the pale skin, the ears was also trying to figure out, well, okay, if we're making them, they're going to be blind. And Paul Hyatt came up with this, who designed the creatures. He came up with this idea of like, almost looking like their eyes were beginning to kind of seal up, not only are they're blind, but they're, you know, it's like they're evolving so that they won't actually have eyes in a few generations' time. And their ears were bigger, like bat ears, or carnivorous, I guess, with their teeth. But, you know, there's not a huge amount of prosthetics to them. A lot of it's body paint and a lot of KY jelly. Well, the actors did very great. They seem so committed. Definitely. Yeah, the way they did. Yeah, they were essentially like wandering around naked with these little pouches glued to their fronts to cover them up. So, yeah, they were committed and brave. I think in one of the commentaries you'd mentioned that you shot the crawlers differently. Yeah, they were all shot at 18 frames a second at a 45-degree shutter to give them a more staccato kind of look. Okay. Interesting. Fast and jerky. All right. Crazy spider-like. Because you could like see it, but it's tough to tell like what it is, but you can see it. There's something off of that though. Sense that there's something about them, yeah. Almost harder to understand, which increased the fear factor as well. Evidence of the miners? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, here in the pit. This is where it would be. Makes sense. I just wanted this to be really ranted just through all the corpses and things lying there. It reminded me a bit like Texas Chainsaw Massacre with, you know, the houses just as skeletons and bones everywhere and bits of flesh and flies, stuff like that. This is, that was one of the scenes where we had to cheat a little bit because we just didn't have a light source. It's a really difficult problem to solve as you've chosen one of the most difficult places in the world to solve that problem. I think you did a brilliant job. So much of the other lighting was literally like just off green there is somebody standing with like a little reflector board that basically her own torch is bouncing back into her face. That's it. Not overly intense, yeah. Keeps kind of the color of the light. That's a prosthetic body, right? That's not actually the actress. Yeah, we mix and match. There's like one shot there of the real actress and then the rest is the prosthetic body. Really impressive work again. Sometimes you get surprised with what can be pulled off, special effects. It was so realistic and at the end of the film presented it with her own head. It was a keepsake and she took it home and she hid it in her mom's fridge. That's brilliant. And then like hid behind the curtains or something went for her mom to come home and open the fridge. I thought that was genius. Her mom was never the same after that. Never, never forget her. Look at this resourceful. Remember when characters were smart and made like clever decisions? Especially within their own skill sets too, you know? Yeah, this isn't like an unbelievable sort of thing. It's, you know, all right, I got some oil, I got this thing. All right, you know. Yeah, I was trying to come up with like the tools that would enable this to happen, but I also wanted to get back to build primal stuff. So it's like fire and fire in caves and it just makes it very primal. I like that because Sarah's regression or descend or whatever it is, like she becomes very primal. Yeah, from a more civilized sort of state to a bit more barbaric and animalistic. Savage. Yes, savage. This is just one of those takes where it's like, okay, well, let's just keep it running and running. And oh, is there something there? No, where's it going to come from? I think you assume that when you return, that that's when it'll turn up and then it doesn't. You're like, oh, are we safe? It's like, hmm. No, you're never safe. Yeah, there he is. Clark, nice and quiet until. And yeah, we showed one earlier that was just lurking on the wall up top, just waiting. So yeah, there's just no, there's no beauty to any of it. It's just so animalistic and they're trying to get each other. I love how she's just gone into full on fucking combat. Oh, it makes it so hard not to like her. Well, we saw her face in that previous scene, just, you know, the actress did such a good job that, you know, all right, it's kill mode now. We're well, yeah, yeah. Addition from Panic to Steely Determination. Well, because it's like, you just have to imagine what's going through her head. It's like, I can be scared or I can live, which requires me to be strong. That's going to have to be what I have to do. Yeah. Well, as well as like, obviously we've established throughout this, like these things can be beaten individually. Like they're not this invincible supernatural threat. Yeah, that always annoys me. Things that are inexplicably like bulletproof or something. Yeah, bulletproof, yeah. These are just very much flesh and blood creatures that can be killed like anything else. And like they have weapons, they can defend themselves if they all work together and stick together. You can fuck them up, but they can fuck you up. So be careful. Yeah, in case it makes it more of an even match just because of that, you know, a bunch of women going down a cave, they're not taking guns with them or anything. Exactly, yeah. They've got what they've got. Really interested in how taking regular people and stripping away society and all that kind of stuff to see how primal and savage it will become and to survive. That fascinates me. Yeah, you hear all those stories about people trapped in places or stuck on islands or raised by wolves. No, things people do. Yeah, I was raised by wolves, actually. Yeah, they're nice, really nice. You get to know them. They just, it's so relatable hearing them talk. Like everyone's just like normal. They say things that you would expect people to say. They don't have these harebrained schemes or jump to these wild conclusions. One of them isn't a random rocket scientists who builds a teleporter out of rocks and bones. It's so grounded and believable. The most that they have is a doctor or a medical student, but like, you know, what the hell does she know about underground creatures? She gives it a best shot. Well, that scene there was probably the closest we got to like a reprieve. I think that's reasonable. Like it's a bit of air. Oh yeah, and I hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, because this scene is not friendly. This is kind of rough to shoot this one. A lot of credit goes to the guys who made all the bones and the gunk and the gore bits that are just laying around. It looks so, I mean, the way that it's textured and it looks wet and it looks, you know, you have the furry bits and the antlers. It looks so good. A lot of animal bits, antlers and stuff. It's not just seriously important character stuff that's happening, it's that the audience gets to feel like she was thrown in with a bunch of flesh and bone as like, you know, to be trashed or kept ready to eat. Horrifying. Did you use any real animal bones or skeleton bits? It's entirely possible. I'm not 100% sure, but okay. There wouldn't, it might have been bones. It wouldn't have been... No actual dead deer corpses that you had them, yeah. They tend to go very stinky under the lights. I would imagine. I mean, the first deer on the top that we saw before they got in the cave, that was all a fake one that had been put together and that looked great. Well, yeah, Paul Hyatt, the make-up effects supervisor, he couldn't come in that day because we covered the dead deer with maggots and he has this complete phobia of maggots. Yeah, maggots. You want to be anywhere near the maggots. I can't do that. I can't do that. Yeah, this is an unfortunate but very realistic result of what's happened. Yeah, I mean, I was just like, you know, the more I think about this concept of like, you know, you've got to stove your best friend's head in with a rock in order to put her out of a misery. It's like, what does it take to do that? Yeah, I mean, this is... How does that affect you? The most you can ask of a friend, I'd say. Yeah, and then this notion that, you know, somehow if she escapes, she's going to be all right after this. Yeah, no, I don't think so. Pulling back so we don't see the grizzly details. Yeah, absolutely, because that was one of those ones where it's like, this isn't about seeing gore, isn't it, but it's all about the emotion. It's like, let's just give her a moment and then we'll do something else quickly. That lighter like voice, it's higher pitched in a smaller size, yeah. God, you don't look how fucking terrifying as well, though. So that was the kid playing that crawler was the same kid. He played a little zombie in 28 days later. Also got his head stuffed in. He's good at it. Interesting childhood he had. Play your strengths. And, you know, obviously this is the reveal that not only is there baby crawlers, but there's female crawlers and it's a whole society. And then, and of course, she's just killed the child of the mother plays on a whole nother level with her character. That is properly like this is like the sump of the entire cave, isn't it? Like all the the blood and guts and everything just drained down into here. This was the most significant memory I had of the film after I'd first seen it when it came out because I was pretty young. And this shot, I'd never forgot it. Man, this is iconic. This is an iconic horror shot for cinema. And what's cool, I assume reminiscent of a certain other movie. And yet, it's sort of I'd say causing inspiration, create your own very iconic shot. 2001 A Space Odyssey. Absolutely. Oh, I love it. It's just the flame lights flickering, the red and everything. It's so much blood. It's absolutely bloody disgusting and yet amazing. I mean, this is this is like the most hellish sort of. It really does in that creepy, gory way. It looks like you're in the depths of a hell pit. A literal baptism in blood. And her and Juno going kind of similar journeys in opposite directions in a sense. Like Juno saves friends while doing it. She's like covered in blood in the easting stomach pool with the the lady who's angrietic. She killed its son probably that happened to deal with. You know what I mean? It just feels much more grimy. Even just like this flat expression, right? Like she's already sort of acclimating and adapting to this situation in a way that she's got to do. You got the drill just landing on my head there. I'm kicking her in the head with accidental, but I was like, oh, that works. That looks good. See, after shooting this scene, you would have to spend hours in the shower. Just trying to get all this shit off you. I think she had a bit of a pink glow after this one. Go fire in a club. That is a bit like 2001. Picking up the bone and using it as a club. Oh, yeah. And it is, yeah. Reject, Juno. We just need to have the soundtrack in the back as she goes. Throws the bone in the air in slow-mo. There's a really subtle but interesting sound cut there. Screams at the top of her lungs, and then it cuts to them. The sound that you can hear is a crawler screaming, not her. Hurry. Whatever that means. Is she becoming like the crawlers? Is it just a coincidence? Is that what you need to become to survive here? That notion that if the crawlers don't exist, and they're just a figment of her imagination, is she the one who's actually going around killing the other girls? Is she essentially the crawler in her own mind? Again, I'm leaving it open to interpretation. I don't know if that's, is that right or wrong? Who knows? Now, she's seen a bunch of crawlers, so. Yeah. A little bit terrifying. A little bit. Is it almost crowded? Yeah, it's just. Yeah, the most all at once. Yeah, well, it just gives you a big sense that good cod they're everywhere. Yeah. Before this point, you could almost hypothesize. Maybe there's only just a couple. Maybe there's not that many. But no, there's just a lot of them. Yeah, so we started to build them up in groups. Understand how many they were. Yeah, and this scene, I think, is much stronger when you have that, the length of the prior one. How difficult this is to do. She doesn't have gloves either. Gotta keep moving. Yeah, that looks really fucking hard. And also just that it was her sister who did it first time around. Now she's taken on the task herself. Also, this shot. And this, this, this originated. Yeah, this originated from the story I heard about a climber in the 70s. I think he's a Scots climber called Joe Brown and across the roof of a cave using these cracks where he'd like stick his hand in and clench his fist up it from coming back out again. And so he could hang from his fist like that. Wow. Which is clearly going to like destroy your hands. So I thought that's a really interesting kind of idea for this beat was just ripping around because he's a doctor or whatever, like ripping our hearts to shreds. And I think the drama of this situation makes a lot of people including the audience forget. It's like, you have a horde behind you, by the way. They're coming. Yeah, they're playing. I had fun playing around with the whole upside down bit with this scene as well. And in order to achieve one of these, these the blood effect at the end of this sequence, it was like come up with a solution for her falling on it. How do we have this massive amount of blood that's going to come out and only like start pouring out when she falls backwards? To which I managed to come up with a solution which was to basically get like a hot water bottle, fill it full of blood and stick it down her top. When she fell back, it all just came pouring out. Oh, okay. Well, it looks great. And it's not just the blood, just the way the camera moves. Oh, yeah. The way that, yeah. That's short of the fingernail. They just get right in. I left but to jump. Um, this was actually a pickup when we were in the edit. We were like, can we get another little beat in there? So we went back and we shot this underwater sequence just to add another little bit of like, that just make it relentless at this point. Yeah. Yeah. It really does feel like at this point, this movie is not going to let up. No. It's a new way of watching the audience for the first time of like the sense of like, oh my God, it just keeps on, they keep on hitting us again, again, and again. Were you hoping at this point to get, uh, do you know having gone fully into water while Sarah's gone fully into like a blood swamp feels, uh, an interesting comparison, a contrast between the two of them at this point in the story. It wasn't conscious. So it was just, I needed, you know, I needed to have a jump to the cliff to survive and it was like, well, all this water we're seeing throughout the movie, it's all going to be gathering somewhere. So I think it makes for an interesting like, uh, civilization aspect, right, of Sarah's life being stripped down to cave woman mode. Meanwhile, Juno is still very recognizable, especially after being cleaned up from having gone into the water as just rock climber girl trying to survive this whole situation. So the square off feels that much more contrasted. And the contrast is certainly apparent here. Oh yeah. Yeah. There has been through some stuff. Oh, full savage. You want to jump in the water? It's really nice. But yeah, thematically in just the aesthetic here, just showing what she's been through and what she's becoming, it's pretty very direct for a very direct sort of change that I think is very appropriate. It's not so subtle at this point, which is the point. I'm doing. And, uh, yeah, obviously she wanted to test Juno about Beth's death. Yeah, I suppose it's an irony if Juno had been more honest. Am I lived? Yeah. And, you know, and after all, Beth's death was an accident. It was, yeah. It was just the fact that her lies about she died. But then, you know. The problem is it's just there's no one's going to stop and make explanations at this point. No, and I imagine for Juno she'd be like, how the hell am I going to explain what happened? It makes me sound like an asshole either way, right? Yeah. But obviously Sarah interprets that as the worst vision, which is that she would have wounded Beth and left her as bait. Yeah. Protect herself. Yeah. Which I mean is viable, uh, unfortunately. What a desperate way. The way they're so still. I love how they're so still. Like they're just waiting. We ended up in the shooting schedule. I think we ended up with like half a day to shoot this. Fight sequence. It's not. There's a chance to get down and dirty and bootle up again. And I mean, and looking at the characters, it does like so many films nowadays they try to pretty, particularly women, they try to pretty them up all the time in between shots to their hair, get their makeup all right and sorted out. So they look lovely and like their models, even if in the movie, they've been fighting and running around and exerting themselves. But in this movie, you really feel like they've been through so much. They look so different by the end. They're worn and dirty and I love how she's biting them though. Yeah. That's where she's at. That was a character. It was definitely time to get down and dirty, biting and smashing heads in and thumbs in the eyes and anything goes really, just not. I think some of you said on the making of was that it was kind of a deliberate choice to have. You know, is yelling and screaming and doing all kinds of verbiage throughout while Sarah's basically silent. Very measured. Yeah. Like the bit where she wipes her soul. Good as new. All that eye gunk. What marvelous restraint you had to not have a line here? You killed her, didn't you? I will make you pay. Good. She looks at the audience. The big inspiration was last for me. Heacons loved the ending of the weekends where like there's no dialogue. Just like the 15 minutes at the end of the movie. It's just everything is just explained to action. And I was just like, how can I do that? Do a little smack there. Yeah. I think it's the shot where she raises it up. Like she just looks mad. Yeah. Yeah. It's like obviously there's some like heavy sort of carry reference going on. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yes. What a tragic end ever. Like even then Juno still goes out like an absolute boss. Yeah. She's ready to keep going. I can do this all day. And I guess obviously the producers or whatever I think it's since we don't see her die. I think it's possible so that's how she comes back for the sequel. Oh my god. Descent 2, Juno. Juno's revenge. A Juno story. I don't know how well you remember Descent Part 2 but like the only physical evidence that she went through that battle is apparently she's lost her pants. They decided to put her in shorts in the sequel. Well, if you're if you're happy to, I was actually going to ask you about Descent Part 2. I haven't actually seen it. I haven't yet either. No, I mean, yeah. I honestly didn't even know it existed. When I found out you hadn't written or directed it, I was a little bit skeptical. I'm just going to put it that way. Yeah, at the beginning it was like they were going to do it anyway because they had the rights to do it and they didn't need my permission to do it so they wanted to do it anyway. So initially I did get involved with trying to guide it in the right direction but a lot of ideas were rejected and they just carried on doing it anyway so it was like, okay, you're just going to do your own thing. And one of those things is bringing back Juno and putting her in a pair of shorts to make her more sexy or something. I don't know. She wasn't sexy enough before, you see. Exactly. That was exactly the kind of stuff I was fighting against on this film. Because there was a suggestion at one point was like, we have a scene where they all arrive at this pool of water and they all strip naked and go for a swim. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Did you guys even see the first movie? Did you understand what it was or anything? That was for the first movie. That was for this movie. They wanted it in this movie, right? Oh my gosh. Jesus. You guys have... One of the producers suggested that and said like, if that's the movie you want to make, I'll leave now because that's not the movie I'm making. If you can't tell that. That would have ruined the vibe. Oh, it would have ruined it. It's so silly. It would have taken us right out of it. And they have money. They can make a porno if they want to. Didn't mean to over talk, by the way, the shots you had of her climbing there were phenomenal. Absolutely. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Super iconic. Do you have a favorite shot? Do I have a favorite shot in the whole film? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Oh, but that one with her climbing up the ladder sort of thing there is one of the best. It's beautiful. Yeah. And now there's a few close-ups that I really like at the end there and that confrontation. The two shots of the girls, like, amazing. But it's a beautiful film. It's the thing. I think it's... It doesn't get enough credit for Sam McCurdy who shot it of just how beautiful it really looks. The cinema's on beat throughout. It's just incredible. It was all shot in 35mm. It looks like it's got a texture to it. And it really owes itself well to those, you know, the brutality of the scenes and the texture of the caves as well. It's very complimentary. No, you know, it's on blue right and stuff like that. So it looks gorgeous. Yeah. It's been a rough day. Yeah. So the American cut... So do we sting up to end the movies? That was the end. So in the American cut, that was the end. Had the close-up on her eyes cut to end credits. It's not my fault. Don't blame me. We made her eyes extra blue on this one as well. This is the six candles on there. Yeah. As opposed to five, yeah. So what is that like then? Do they come to you and say like, I don't like that she's still in the cave? I think you should make it so that she's not, that sort of like explicit or is it something else? Lionsgate did some test screenings. And they said, we've had an idea. We've test screened it twice. With the original ending, we got these results. And with the cut ending, we got these results, which were noticeably better. They basically said like, if you let us cut the last 30 seconds of the film, we'll give it like a 3,000 screen release. If you don't, we'll give it like a 1,000 screen release. And I don't know whether they really meant that or not, but we were like, fuck it. Because by this point, it was like a year after the film had come out in the UK and the rest of the world. We were like, oh yeah, for the big release, go for it. Anybody who wants to see the original version will be able to. If it'll be there, and it can get on Amazon and order it from the UK if they want to. But as it turned out, the version came out as the unrated version. And I think that's kind of the only version you can get in the US now as the unrated version. So in the end, it's okay, we got the full ending. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. Yeah, I feel like the extended ending, I don't even like to call, that feels to me, the proper ending for the film. It strikes me as her getting out of the cave. It just seems a little too easy. And then it brings us back to reality, which is she's descended into madness, which is the expected outcome of this excursion. Absolutely. I mean, it's just so much more interesting and so much more to talk about. It's so much, I just think it adds. And you know what? I mean, it makes it a distinctive ending, and ending that really sets it apart. There's so many interpretations. If you desperately need it in your own head that she escapes, you could take it as she did escape, but that in her mind, she's still in the cave. Yeah. You could go that direction. Yeah, absolutely, if you like. I mean, it's open to interpretations, which I like. But I think also for me was like, I wanted to just give the audience that final kick in the teeth of like, oh, she's vomited, and then she's seen her friend. Oh, fuck, actually, back to the cave. Yeah. Well, it fits with the whole theme, I guess, of this movie of just never letting up and never letting you go, never giving you that moment to breathe and letting you, like, even if there's a few seconds of quiet, it's like straight away, there's another thing. And it's just a perfect way to end it, I think, just that gradual descent into just loss of all hope, I suppose. It fits with the traumatic past of the character. And yeah, it's just, it sits nicely with how the movie's tone is. I want to argue too, it's kind of set up, because you have a lot of moments in the film, just like when she wakes up in the hospital, when the pole comes through the window, that they are, you believe and she believes that she's in the real world, and then she wakes up to realize, oh, I'm not. And so it's an interesting flip that at the end, something, quote, good is happening, but that if you've been paying attention, she does hallucinate. So you're like, you know, it's almost waiting for the other shoe to drop. You're like, uh-oh, is this real? The other thing I really appreciate about this film, like it's runtime is what, 90 minutes? Or they're abouts? They're abouts? Like, there's so much in it. Powerful. For the length of time that it runs, like there's so much in it, there's so, like all the characters feel like properly fleshed out, there's great arcs for everyone, plenty of action, plenty of mystery to unravel, and it's all crammed into this really condensed runtime, but it never feels rushed. I just think that's great. Nice superfluous scenes, every scene serves a purpose that builds character, it builds tension, builds theme. And like we said, you know, the crawlers don't really show up until a bit 45 minutes into it. And so you've got all of that time, and yet still it doesn't feel rushed once they arrive. Impressive, the pacing of it. And I was really happy with the pacing of it. I think, yeah, it did work out pretty well. And it's still at 45 minutes worth of crawler action. It's like you still get to know it's about the crawlers and their society, their culture, and a lot of visual information in that. What a wonderful, wonderfully timed movie, wonderfully paced. Excellent in terms of how it stands the test of time, the practicality of it holds up so well, and there's layers of things to talk about. So many horror movies are just, Oh yeah, the monster came and it killed the lady, a bitter head off, and it was cool. Well, this definitely has those layers of character and subtext and, you know, a journey happening. So many tropes to avoid, right? Like, this one character walks off on her own and a distant area gets killed, and then they're all like, Oh, it's like, I need a pee because off on her own gets killed. And you're like, Hey, if you want to do it that way, I guess. They're all relatively intelligent. They're all relatively resourceful, but within limits, like practical limits, they feel like real people, and they make generally pretty good decisions throughout the film. Yeah, that's the time. Yeah, I mean, obviously again, I really didn't want to do the, Yeah, I really didn't want to have the characters acting really stupid. And have that whole, you know, why don't you all wait here while I'm going to go and explore that down here and then get killed kind of thing. So there is one beat where her goes to, she hears a daughter or what sounds like a daughter and goes to explore that, but it doesn't result in anybody getting killed. Yeah, and it's the, it's kind of interesting to think about in retrospect that when they first attacked, they all sort of run off in different directions, kind of. And while if they'd stayed together, use their light effectively, they might have been able to make it out or at least survive a little longer, but that's the nature of this experience. You're not panicking. Yeah. It happened so quick and it shot in such a way that it really conveys that panic and the frenetic quickness of everything, just, you know, shit hitting the fans so quickly that you don't really blame them for not being so rational in those moments. I see, I mean, it's an authentic reaction. So. Oh, yeah. Oh, it shows. And again, just a more praise on that particular thing because it's just such a surprise to have one of the girls be able to take one of them out and immediately have her take out one of her own friends. You'll see it very often because the goal, of course, from a filmmaking perspective would be to endear everyone to that character. And if she's killed one, you're like, well, maybe she'll kill more. Maybe she'll be our warrior character. But now you're conflicted because you're like, that's just happened. Now what do I feel about it? What I feel about the whole event and how is it going to move on? And just, like I said, you just don't see that enough. Um, in the same way that you don't see bleak endings enough and they can create a lot of really raw experiences of a moviegoer. But of course, you could, as you've said, you can get discouraged to do that when you get test screen reactions that they prefer to have the happier endings. Yeah, it's interesting, um, of late because I remember hearing a couple of weeks ago, whatever, like first reactions to Oppenheimer and people saying that, hey, people are going to walk out of the screening depressed or shell shocked or whatever. And my initial reaction to all that was like, great. I can't wait to see this film because I might actually come out feeling something as opposed to nothing, which just seems to be the very common of like, everything's so bland. It's like, great. Something that actually might stir some emotions in me, whatever they may be. I don't mind if it's negative, but at least it's something. Yeah, there's so many bland, empty movies out there that are just this tasteless sludge, you know, that, you know, hey, I just want to feel something, damn it. With this film, did you feel in relation to Descent 2 that this was a one and done sort of situation? The story was told? Yeah, as far as I was concerned, it was like, that's it. What else to take the story? It's like Sarah's chopped down there. She's going to die. Juneau's dead. I don't know where to go. Yeah. It was a case of like, well, this is a success. Let's see if we can cash in on that and make some more. And, but the motivation to the producers to do that and how they did it was just like such a mess. It's like, you know, and their thinking was, all that matters is that we get some characters into the cave. Once it was a cave, it doesn't matter what happens. It's like, that's all people want to see. Like, do you not learn anything from what from the experience of making the first film? Do you not even talk to audiences about it? It's like, it just seems such a dumb response of like, you know, audiences don't care. They just want to get into the cave and see the monsters. Yeah. You've missed everything really. What's interesting, if you do watch the second one, it's interesting that it actually, it doesn't pick up from either ending. It doesn't pick up from the kind of start. I haven't seen it a long time. Like Sarah's suddenly like emerges from the lake. Um, there was a notion that picking up from the UK ending that she jumps off the ledge and ends up into the water and then gets washed out of the cave somehow. And then that's how she ends up in a lake. But they never shot that first part. So she just literally like emerges out of the lake. So it doesn't. So daft. Like there's nothing about this movie that would make me think, I want to see another one or I want to see a continuation of this story. It's a, it's a wrapped up finished complete narrative. It was almost nothing that I'd want to pick up. It's almost crazy. It's making like some kind of weird sequel to the thing, you know, and then the thing's a good example or seven. Imagine a sequel to seven. But where's it going to go? Well, at least they didn't actually make a sequel to seven called eight or something. Eight. But unfortunately the thing did get a sequel. They would have called it seven two. Seven, seven two. Seven and a half. Oh, it's a musical. Yeah, I suppose the thing did get the prequel as opposed to the sequel. It did, yeah. Which, you know what, I struggled to have a strong hatred for just because when you find out they did all the practical effects and then they got sort of cg'd over. You feel bad for the team behind it. Yeah, it's a tragedy. I feel bad for the team, but I also feel bad for the fact that they seriously, they couldn't come up with a title for it. Right, right, yeah. Let's also call it the thing. Should have called it things. Things, yeah. Or the other thing. The other thing. The thing from the before the thing. The first thing. They should have called it stuff. I think that was the era of soft reboots and things just having the same name as the first thing, like Tomb Raider. The idea is inherently lazy anyway, but if you're so fucking lazy, you can't think of anything better than to just use the same title. Just to cause confusion in later years with like which one are we talking about here? What'll happen in culture is that people will forget one of them. Usually not the classic that they forget. How about that? How about that? However could that be? Do you have a sort of a favorite production memory? The favorite thing was the fact that we shot it very much in story order. Once we got into the studio, so we did the location stuff first then we got into the studio and we pretty much shot the whole thing exactly in story order. And so every time a character got killed, you're wrapping that castment so that literally they'd stagger off the set having been brutally killed, come off the set covered in blood and be given a bunch of flowers and it'd be like, you know, that it's a wrap on that actor. And then we wouldn't see them again until we whittled it down to literally it was just Sarah on it. And then on the very, very last day because the last shot of the movie it was the last shot that we shot on the last day. That's actually happened quite a lot on some of my films. So that shot of her with the cake and the girl was the last shot that we shot. And what happened was, because everybody was just so environment, the family kind of nature that we created was that for the last day all of the cast came back and hung around all day and were there for the last scene, the last shot. And so it was just great. It was just a really magical moment to call a wrap on the film after getting that shot. But did you do what you were making it? Like this was going to turn out to be one of the best horror movies of all time? I had no idea. No idea. I mean, thinking that we knew the script was pretty good and it was starting to come together visually pretty well but had no idea how it was going to be received. Well, I hope you know you made something pretty special. It was really good. It was a fan. I'm immensely proud of it. I'm immensely proud of it. Good, you should be. This is so much fun. It really is. It's one of the best horror movies, one of the best horror movies I've ever made. Yeah, unironically. Thanks to whoever it was who made that review of Dog Soldiers and inspired it to make this wherever you are out there. Good job. Yes, I'll thank them. Yeah, thank you. Watching all the behind the scenes stuff and the commentaries, it really seemed like you had a fun time. You know, obviously, movies are hard work to make. You know that more than any way but there seem to be some camaraderie. But it's interesting and you can see it on the behind the scenes footage that we actually had a lot of fun making it, weirdly, given it's dark subject matter. And I keep on trying to explain this to people who don't believe me that making horror films is actually a lot of fun and there tends to be a lot of laughs behind the scenes. No matter how dark you get in front of the camera, that was as soon as the blood starts flying around or wherever, it's kind of child's place sometimes. And it's just a lot of fun. The people who make horror films are some of the like the loveliest people I've ever met in the industry. The kindest, nicest people that did, you know, the Stuart Gordons and the McGarrises and the West Cravens of this world, like really, really nice people. You know, in our line of work, we end up seeing a lot of the production behind the scenes stuff to essentially review films and everything just to make sure we got a big old grasp on how they were made. And a lot of the stuff we cover in a lot of senses is Disney related like Marvel or Star Wars. And they're behind the scenes stuff and I think incredibly sterile and very deliberate. Everything is shown to you with a specific purpose in mind. Meanwhile, watching stuff like behind the scenes for the descent or films that maybe are made in a similar vein, they come across so genuine, candid like a group of friends who all have quite a solid skill set understanding their responsibilities but making sure that, you know, it's kind of like a life experience that's actually really fun and you're creating something that's really worthwhile in the meantime. Not something that's like packaged with the very deliberate intention of only making money that no one cares about. Yeah, very much so. We did form a little family to make this movie and we hired a documentary maker to be with us all the time and try and capture that essence in a way. And that was kind of off the back of the experience I had doing Dog Soldiers was kind of like, I want this to be documented. Because it was back in the day when the wonder of DVDs and, you know, DVD extras was prime. You know, we've got some really good materials out of some of that, but it seems to have gone away now and gone back to these kind of very, as you say, sterile, okay, five minutes and the scene things that really don't show you much about experience in any kind of way. That was a wonderfully fun experience. Thank you so much for giving you time for this sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. We'll see you here tomorrow for watching the descent too. Yeah, we'll see you tomorrow for that. Again, thank you so much. Good pleasure. Thank you. I highly recommend the descent. For anybody who decided to just watch this and not watch the film and seen it, go and watch it. Really good. Yes, see it. Do it. Do it. On that note, thank you so much for listening. We will see you next time, folks. Bye, bye, everyone. Toodle-oo. Bye, bye. Bye. Toodle-oo. Watch it bring me.