The film stars actresses Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, Nora-Jane Noone and MyAnna Buring.

Because the filmmakers considered it too dangerous and time-consuming to shoot in an actual cave, interior scenes were filmed on sets built at Pinewood Studios near London designed by Simon Bowles.

One year later, Sarah, Juno, and Beth, as well as friends Sam, Rebecca, and newcomer Holly reunite at a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina for a spelunking adventure.

Juno, trying to prevent Holly's body from being dragged away, kills a crawler with her pickaxe but then, startled and in shock, she accidentally strikes Beth through the neck.

Sarah awakens to find herself in a den of human and animal carcasses, witnessing Holly's body being mauled and eaten by crawlers.

After defeating a group of crawlers close to the exit, Sarah confronts Juno, revealing the pendant and her knowledge of Beth's fate and the affair with Paul.

Defying convention, Marshall cast all women, and to avoid making them clichéd, he solicited basic advice from his female friends.

He also gave the characters different accents to enable the audience to tell them apart and to establish a more "cosmopolitan feel" than the British marketing of Dog Soldiers.

[4] The cast included Shauna Macdonald as Sarah, Natalie Mendoza as Juno, Alex Reid as Beth, Saskia Mulder as Rebecca, MyAnna Buring as Sam, Nora-Jane Noone as Holly, Oliver Milburn as Paul, and Molly Kayll as Jessica.

[4] Marshall cited the films The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Thing, and Deliverance as influences in establishing tension in The Descent.

"[6] The film had twenty-one cave sets, built by Rod Vass and his company Armordillo Ltd. using a unique system of polyurethane sprayed rock that was developed for this production.

The Descent was originally scheduled to be released in the United Kingdom by November 2005 or February 2006, but The Cave began filming six months before its competitor.

The filmmakers of The Descent decided to release their film before The Cave, so they fast-tracked production to be completed by the end of February 2005.

[9] Marshall first chose to have a dark cave as the setting for his horror film The Descent then decided to add the element of the crawlers, describing them as "something that could get the women, something human, but not quite".

The skin was originally phosphorescent in appearance, but the effect was too bright and reflective in the darkened set, so the adjustment was made for them to blend in shadows.

According to Hyett, "Jon wanted them more viciously feral, inbred, scarred and deformed, with rows of sharklike teeth for ripping flesh."

[12] Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald described the crawlers as "blind, snarling cave-dwellers, looking much like Gollum's bigger kin".

[15] Douglas Tseng of The Straits Times also noted that the crawlers looked similar to Gollum, being a cross between the creature and the vampiric Reapers from Blade II.

[16] David Germain of the Associated Press noted of the crawlers, "[They] have evolved to suit their environment—eyes blind because of the darkness in which they dwell, skin slimy and gray, ears batlike to channel their super-hearing.

"[17] The crawlers are sexually dimorphic, with males being completely bald, whilst females sport thick dark hair on their heads.

The film's theatrical distributor in the UK, Pathé, recalled the posters from their placement in the London Underground and reworked the campaign to exclude the word "terror" from advertised reviews of The Descent.

The distributor's marketing chief, Anna Butler, said of the new approach, "We changed tack to concentrate on the women involved all standing together and fighting back.

The website's consensus reads: "Deft direction and strong performances from its all-female cast guide The Descent, a riveting, claustrophobic horror film.

"[25] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 71 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

"[27] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times described The Descent as "one of the better horror entertainments of the last few years", calling it "indisputably and pleasurably nerve-jangling".

Dargis applauded the claustrophobic atmosphere of the film, though she perceived sexual overtones in the all-female cast with their laboured breathing and sweaty clothing.

[29] Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer thought a weakness of The Descent was the failure of the writer to explain the evolution of the creature, though he said, "Their clicking and howling, used for echolocation and communication, makes them more alien; this otherness gives humans permission to mutilate them without seeming too disgusting to be sympathetic.

"[30] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune thought that the crawlers should have been left out of the film, believing, "Watching those gray, slithering beings chasing and biting the women makes it hard to maintain any suspension of disbelief.