10 Horror Movie Characters Who Went Through Hell (Then Died Anyway)
5. The Descent
Future Hellboy director Neil Marshall’s 2005 horror The Descent is one of the twenty first century’s most brutally effective cinematic scare machines. Released at the height of the so-called torture porn era, this viscerally terrifying thrill ride blew competition from the likes of Eli Roth and Greg McLean out of the water with its tense and unforgettable tale of cave explorers dispatched by subterranean ghouls.
The film wastes no time setting up the torture, both physical and psychological, of its cast. Our poor heroine Sarah sees her husband and child skewered before the opening credits are even over. Soon, she’s forced to scrape her way through a claustrophobic collapsing tunnel, mercy kill her mate with a rock, sacrifice her former friend Juno, and find the gory remains of her remaining mates.
And that’s not even mentioning all the times she personally kills countless crawlers to earn her eventual escape from the subterranean hellscape.
In the American re-edit, that is.
In the British original cut, she’s just stuck down there with the monsters, losing her mind and waiting to inevitably die. And so it's said: the sequel movie's reliance on the American ending means it bears no weight here.