10 Extreme Movie Scenes That Left Stars Scarred

Not all the genuinely traumatic scenes which are captured on film end up actually making it into the movies they’re made for.

Sometimes, an over-ambitious director’s attempt to capture authenticity can backfire badly, as seen in the making of British horror director Neill Marshall’s underrated 2005 film The Descent.

The terrifying subterranean horror plays out like a pretty conventional survival thriller until over an hour in, when the cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers start to pick off the tight knit group of inexperienced cavers stranded miles underground.

To ensure an effective monster reveal, the filmmakers kept the creature design hidden from their small group of stars until filming one take where the actors were told to stay put and simply react to seeing the monsters in real time.

Whereupon, genuinely terrified and unable to hide it, the actors all promptly bolted across the set in terror en masse. This run immediately took them offscreen, rendering the take unusable.

Then again, anyone who has seen The Descent’s unforgettable monsters could hardly blame this reaction, and you can be sure they were still plenty scared of the monsters when it came time to yell “action” again.