10 Horror Movies That Fill You With Dread

10. The Descent

Neil Marshall’s low budget hit could serve as a crash course to budding horror directors on how to do a lot with a little. For not much more than £3 million, Marshall created a world awash with terror. In The Descent, the dread comes not just from the creatures dwelling underground, but from the protagonists’ gradual loss of humanity.

The film’s protagonists are a group of women on an adventure holiday in the wild Appalachian mountains. While potholing, they go way off the beaten track, and wind up in the lair of some unknown creatures, which are blind, fast, strong, and hungry.

It’s panic attack-inducing stuff for many before the creatures even feature, but what’s smart about The Descent is how the seldom-seen monsters aren’t even the biggest threat. As fear rises, any sense of calm in a crisis disappears, and the women turn on each other with devastating effect.

Many people like to imagine what they’d do were they trapped in a horror movie situation. The Descent most likely answers that question for the majority of us. While the supernatural elements provide the gloss, the depth of the film comes from the all-too-real sense of incapacitating terror.