Film Theory: The Crawlers Weren't The REAL Killers In The Descent

And the cherry on top of the cake is, well, the cake itself. At the true end of the film when Sarah awakens knocked out on the floor of the system after hallucinating her own escape and sees her daughter for the final time, the cake she's holding changes from five candles to six. It's brief, as the change can only be seen on a transition shot moving from the cake back to the daughter's face, but it's definitely there.

Importantly, this shot is one of the most integral to this theory - as up to that point five women have died, and been prophesied to die in Sarah's visions as represented by their candles being blown out at the very start of the film. It's only when Sarah's own fate is sealed as she's left alone to succumb to the cave, surrounded by screeching crawlers, that the extra candle is added to represent her limited time left. All these women are as the birthday candles on Jessica's cake: destined to be extinguished and left in the dark.

That Sarah hears the sounds of the crawlers as she smiles is her acceptance of what she's become, and her fate of death is the only way to be with her daughter, one she accepts gladly.

If none of that was enough to convince you, then just take a look at the title itself. The Descent might represent the women's journey down into the earth, but it's also symbolic of Sarah's own descent into madness.

There has been a sequel, yes, but it wasn't of Neil Marshall's creation, so it has to be argued that it has no real bearing on this original work. A point to bear in mind when watching and applying this theory.

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