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Nick Redfern: "The Descent" (2005) Could Help Us Understand Underground Bigfoot. Or Not. Whatever.

4/8/2015

28 Comments

 
As someone who produces a blog post every day, I can sympathize with the difficulty of finding new material to write about. But it seems that fringe science writer Nick Redfern’s writer’s block is getting the better of him. His recent articles at Mysterious Universe have become increasingly pointless exercises in rehashing and recycling. But yesterday’s article on horror movies and Bigfoot has to be one of Redfern’s most ridiculous pieces yet. And to top it off, it made me feel old not long before my upcoming birthday. The Descent (2005), a film about a group of young women attacked by humanoid creatures while spelunking, is now an old movie from another time? Where do the decades go?
Regular readers will remember that the failure to find Bigfoot anywhere in the United States has led to three speculative hypotheses about where the imaginary ape might be hiding: (a) aboard a flying saucer, (b) in a parallel universe that intersects with ours only in backwoods locales, and (c) in a continent-wide network of underground caverns that no one can prove exist.

Redfern’s opening, overwritten with unnecessary redundancy, sets the stage for the silliness that follows:
Given the fact there are suspicions that Bigfoot’s uncanny ability to elude us on almost every occasion is due to it being a creature which may spend most of its time living in caverns and caves, The Descent is a movie that Bigfoot enthusiasts should watch and think about carefully. There may be more truth in it than anyone might guess.
Anyone except Nick Redfern, who seems to think, like Helena Blavatsky before him, that fiction is hiding truths from the Bigfoot-Nephilim-space alien dimension.

I want to skip ahead to the point, but I can’t let this disaster of a sentence from his plot summary pass by unnoted: “Unknown to the rest of the girls, Juno has decided to have them investigate a completely unknown cave system that – literally – no-one knows about.” As someone who makes plenty of writing errors churning out a daily blog, I can appreciate that not every sentence published online will be immortal artistry, but the redundancy and illogic of the sentence is breathtaking. He says “unknown” in three different ways, and doesn’t notice that if the caves are known to Juno, then they can’t be “literally” unknown to anyone!

The majority of Redfern’s piece is a plot summary of The Descent, which fills space while contributing nothing to his allegation that the movie has relevance to Bigfoot hunting. On the other hand, his summary did manage to make me feel old and also annoy me in my capacity as a horror critic: “Unlike so many of today’s watered down horror movies – that feel the need to provide some sense of hope for the characters and a degree of a happy ending – The Descent does nothing of the sort.” Today’s movies? Was 2005 so long ago now that we’ve passed into a whole new era? My book The Cult of Alien Gods was released that year.

But who would argue that “today’s” horror movies are watered down by hope? If anything, films since 2000 have been darker, more nihilistic, and more violent than practically anything that came before them. The Decent was part of a wave of extremely violent and very dark films like Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005) that asked viewers to find enjoyment in, essentially, rooting for the characters to suffer and die, earning them the moniker “torture porn.” It’s true that the torture porn wave burned itself out on its own excess, but it would be difficult to argue that the much reduced horror genre that followed the collapse of torture porn has entirely moved into new and more hopeful territory. It’s important to remember that even torture porn movies left some characters alive, while later films, like Drag Me to Hell (2009), had no trouble with dark endings. 

The line between hopeful and hopeless is not clear-cut, and The Descent isn’t a stable text that allows us to draw that line clearly. The U.S. theatrical version of the film features an ending in which one of the characters seems to escape her fate, while the international version and the DVD release contain a darker, hopeless ending. According to Entertainment Weekly in 2006, American audiences couldn’t handle the “über-hopeless” ending of the international cut. Lionsgate executive Tim Palen said “It’s a visceral ride, and by the time you get to the ending you’re drained. [Director Neil] Marshall had a number of endings in mind when he shot the film, so he was open [to making a switch].” Both versions of the story exist simultaneously, with the U.S. broadcast version continuing to air on TV with an ending in which one character escapes.

These facts should undercut Redfern’s argument that 2005 was a uniquely pure moment for nihilistic horror.

He then goes on to compare the cannibal creatures that consume the characters of The Descent to the bloodthirsty underground Morlocks of H. G. Wells’s 1895 novel The Time Machine. (He apparently knows the story only from the movies since he describes it as including nuclear war.) Yet because Redfern is a fringe writer and a shallow thinker, he fails to recognize the broader motif that these creatures represented, and continued to represent in horror fiction like H. P. Lovecraft’s 1922 serial “The Lurking Fear” (also about cannibals in caves), and in more popular (if less horrific) form in The Mole People (1956). These stories have degenerate humans or humanoids living below ground because they represent atavism, presenting in fictional form the fear of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Wells made this more or less explicit in arguing that both the terrifying Morlocks and their more graceful aboveground counterparts, the Eloi, evolved from humanity. Lovecraft was more concerned about the risk of reversion, the failure of a sort of teleological view of progress. Here’s how he described his underground cannibals:
The object was nauseous; a filthy whitish gorilla thing with sharp yellow fangs and matted fur. It was the ultimate product of mammalian degeneration; the frightful outcome of isolated spawning, multiplication, and cannibal nutrition above and below the ground; the embodiment of all the snarling chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life. 
The Descent is not, perhaps, as invested in making a deep point about evolution or regression but nonetheless the film’s creatures capture the same atavistic feeling as Lovecraft. In 2005, director Neil Marshall said of his monsters in The Northern Echo that they were intended to be cavemen who failed to evolve into modern humans. “I wanted to have this very feral, very primal species living underground, but I wanted to make them human. I didn’t want to make them aliens because humans are the scariest things.” Despite this, Redfern prefers to read the monsters as analogous to Bigfoot, accidentally stumbling upon a truth: that Bigfoot stories are really stories about human beings and their relationship to the wild and untamed natural world they try and often fail to transcend. Redfern fails to notice this even though he rants about how “we are not the superior beings we arrogantly assume ourselves to be.”

Redfern concludes by hoping that humans will someday find Bigfoot’s network of underground caverns and tunnels. Surely, of all the fringe hypotheses, that one ought to be easy enough to test. Tunnels don’t move and can’t vanish when you’re not looking at them. So where are they? Redfern doesn’t know and, to judge by this movie review masquerading as insight into Bigfoot, doesn’t care.

Redfern’s article is an embarrassment by any standard: a movie review ten years too late married to unexamined fringe speculation without connecting analysis or any real attempt to deal with the material beyond the facile equation of “looks like, therefore is.” Actually, not even that. With the conditional tense Redfern employs we should instead call it “looks like, therefore might be.”

28 Comments
Clete
4/8/2015 07:41:51 am

To be truthful, the movie that shows what Bigfoots are all about is "Harry and the Hendersons".

Reply
Bob Jase
4/8/2015 07:46:41 am

You are casting aspersions on the Six-Million Dollar Man!

Reply
Bob Jase
4/8/2015 07:45:46 am

Now are these caverns the same ones that Caddie/Ogopogo/Nessie uses to get from offshore Vancouver Island to Lake Okanagan & to Loch Ness? If so then bigfoot must be good at holding its breath.

The creatures in Descent never made much sense to me - the film indicated that they also came out of the caverns to hunt & eat wild animals so they clearly could live on the outside. And they were physically superior to humans so could have competed with us. They may work symbolically but not biologically.

Reply
EP
4/8/2015 08:00:41 am

You're completely right about the creatures. They are also strong enough to climb across ceilings, yet a human female can wrestle with them. And they evolved to navigate by sound and smell, yet they cannot detect someone breathing and sweating a few inches from their face.

They do work if you don't over-think things, however.

Reply
Drew
4/9/2015 12:37:16 am

In planning a Scotland vacation, I told my 4 year old that Mommy and Daddy would be visiting Loch Ness and maybe we'd see that dinosaur that lives in the lake.

"Daddy," he said, voice full of child scorn, "There is no dinosaur that lives in the lake."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. It's just an underwater elephant with a puppet on its trunk playing a trick on people!"

He then proceeded to draw a picture of an elephant hiding underwater with a dinosaur puppet and people in a boat pointing. His book, Nessie Is For Real, will be out in the fall.

Reply
EP
4/9/2015 08:27:02 am

That is ADORABLE!!! :D

Alaric
4/8/2015 07:50:37 am

Philosophically, “looks like, therefore might be” strikes me as less problematic than “looks like, therefore is”, but I agree it seems like an odd and pointless thing to base that sort of article around.

Reply
EP
4/8/2015 07:57:43 am

"The Decent was part of a wave of extremely violent and very dark films like Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005) that asked viewers to find enjoyment in, essentially, rooting for the characters to suffer and die, earning them the moniker “torture porn.”"

Jason, I don't think it's quite right to classify The Descent as "torture porn". It is a very dark and gory horror movie with a "bad end" (in what I insist is the proper version), but the gore is neither accentuated nor meant to push the envelope. What's doing the work is claustrophobia and some timely jump scares. As well as conflict between the characters, whose deaths I certainly never thought of as meant to be rooted for.

I do find it strange that Neil Marshall says that he meant for the monsters to be primitive humans. I always saw them as utterly INhuman in everything but basic primate physiology and thought that was a big part of what made them work so well.

(And Redfern's article itself, the less is said about it, the better.)

Reply
Shane Sullivan
4/8/2015 10:49:39 am

"I do find it strange that Neil Marshall says that he meant for the monsters to be primitive humans. I always saw them as utterly INhuman in everything but basic primate physiology and thought that was a big part of what made them work so well."

That was my impression too. I mean, I can see the benefit of making them a humanoid, as opposed to arachnid or avian or something. Not really the same as human.

I guess that goes to show how art can succeed in spite of the artists intentions.

Reply
EP
4/8/2015 12:31:33 pm

So have the comments been fixed, or what?

EP
4/8/2015 12:33:54 pm

I don't know if that was his intention, as opposed to him thinking post factum that claiming a variation on the theme of "humans are the real monsters" would make him sound profound.

Neil Marshall is something of a one-hit wonder and never struck me as the sharpest knife in the drawer.

KH
4/8/2015 02:04:17 pm

I don't think Marshall is a one hit wonder, he's had some other successes. He made Dog Soldiers (2002), which was a very interesting and entertaining werewolf movie set in the Scottish Highlands. He also directed two episodes of Game of Thrones, specifically Blackwater and The Watchers on the Wall, both of which are among the most popular episodes of the series.

He's no genius, but he's a solid B list talent, at least in my opinion. But, to each his own.

Shane Sullivan
4/8/2015 06:35:40 pm

"I don't know if that was his intention, as opposed to him thinking post factum that claiming a variation on the theme of "humans are the real monsters" would make him sound profound."

You feel good about that? You feel good about sand-bagging me after I agreed with you? =P

"He made Dog Soldiers ..."

I didn't know Dog Soldiers was a Neil Marshall film. I liked that one. And not just because I was fifteen and thought Emma Cleasby was hot, although that contributed.

EP
4/9/2015 08:30:17 am

Shane, I'm an equal-opportunity sand-bagger. You should know that by now :P

KH, I almost wrote "one-and-a-half-hit wonder" because of Dog Soldiers, but refrained myself because, at the end of the day, Dog Soldiers is an entertaining low-budget flick but kinda silly. The Descent, on the other hand, is a legit top-tier horror movie.

Joe Scales
4/9/2015 04:49:24 am

It would have been better as porn... The Dickscent. A bunch of girls go underground and get nasty with lizard men.

Reply
EP
4/9/2015 08:30:49 am

Paging Scotty Roberts to this thread :)

Shane Sullivan
4/8/2015 10:36:10 am

"The object was nauseous; a filthy whitish gorilla thing with sharp yellow fangs and matted fur. It was the ultimate product of mammalian degeneration; the frightful outcome of isolated spawning, multiplication, and cannibal nutrition above and below the ground; the embodiment of all the snarling chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life."

See? H.P. Lovecraft wasn't racist. He just thought all Morlocks belonged underground. =P

Reply
Chris
4/12/2015 02:38:24 pm

Hmmm. Lovecraft says the filthy whitish gorilla thing was "nauseous"? Poor thing, an upset stomach must make it extra hard to be properly monster-ish.

I suspect he meant it made *him* nauseous, in which case the monster's appearance would have been "nauseating."

(Yes, I know I'm being pedantic, but I found it mildly amusing.)

Reply
Jose S
4/8/2015 03:25:24 pm

Those tunnels remind me of a novel writen by Italian fiction author Emilio Salgary. El Tesoro de los Incas (I read the spanish version when I was young) describes a cavern system that conects Mamouth Cave to lake Titicaca . In the story, an American enginner and companions travel this underground cave system in a steam boat. I don't recall them seeing Bigfoot, but that doesn't mean they didn't. Salgari not mentioning it clearly demonstrates a cover up. Could this be the same cave system Redfern is talking about? Could it be that Emilio Salgari's novel was based in "fact"? I wonder!

Sarcastic smile
:-)

Reply
Dave Lewis
4/8/2015 04:02:24 pm

Some of the fringe folks that are on Coast to Coast AM are talking more and more about the Ant People in native American legends as being gray aliens.

Reply
Hi
4/8/2015 04:09:02 pm

This is ridiculous

Reply
Hi
4/8/2015 04:13:49 pm

Reply
Hypatia
4/8/2015 04:34:13 pm

I had this theory that the Big Foot legend was triggered by North American Native ritual habit of wearing grizzly head wear, but now I see that some cults are just born out of fiction that does not even pretend to be prophetic.

Reply
Mark L link
4/8/2015 08:25:21 pm

Man, I hope reviewing ten year old films isn't the primary cause of his being an idiot, because I do it all the time (www.iscfc.net. come along and read my rubbish about a bunch of old movies).

Reply
Only Me
4/8/2015 09:38:17 pm

"The Descent" helps folks understand the idea behind Bigfoot travelling the country, undetected, through the use of underground cave systems. Oh boy.

I guess zombie films will help folks to understand the fringe crowd, since both feature shambling masses that stink up the places they go while sustaining themselves off the living.

Reply
David Bradbury
4/9/2015 01:18:50 am

No, zombie films are supposed to help folks avoid becoming zombies, aimlessly wandering through shopping malls etc.

Meanwhile, in Neil Marshall news- the success of his Game of Thrones episodes (and maybe the failure of his film Centurion) has pushed him more and more into TV, with episodes of Black Sails, Hannibal etc.- and now, for all unpedantic ancient history fans:
http://deadline.com/2015/04/back-up-films-neil-marshalls-brittania-game-of-thrones-returned-canal-1201407168/

Reply
Christine Erikson link
4/12/2015 08:29:21 am

thought you might enjoy this (watch out Jason and Redfern, these, er, people, might sue you guys for your remarks!)

To: Microsoft Lawyers, Inc.
From: Azathoth, Nyarlathotep and Hastur, Elder Attorneys.

Sirs:

Our agents among the mortal herd have brought to Our attention your
recent product entitled Windows '95. Therefore We now give you
statutory notice of intent of proceedings to be taken against Microsoft
by the Many-Angled Ones.

With this suit We will show that Windows '95, and to a lesser extent
all of the Microsoft range of products, infringe upon the recognised
"look-and-feel" of the Elder Gods, for the following reasons:

o Windows '95 is a crawling abomination from the darkest pits of Hell;

o No man can be in it's presence for too long without being driven into
gibbering insanity;

o A cult who worship it exist in secret amongst the mortal herd;

o Those who associate with it for too long develop common physical
characteristics, to wit: pale, clammy skin, bulging eyes, generally
unkempt physical appearance, tendency towards nocturnal living, change
in diet to that which normal men do not eat (in your case tacos,
burgers and Jolt Coke; in Ours, human flesh, Fungi of Yuggoth and the
blood of Alien Gods);

o Mysterious tomes that purport to explain this phenomenon are reputed
to exist; they are bound in an unnatural substance and only available
at a terrible cost to the user.

o The Microsoft range of products seek to utterly dominate the world,
and force all who dwell there to live in eternal damnation.

As you can see, Our case is very strong, especially when you consider
that most judges prefer not to have chittering things with tentacles
for faces scoop out their brains and eat them.

We hope that you will consider these points carefully and settle out of
court, since it is not Our intention to have your senior partners spend
the rest of their mercifully short lives under heavy sedation in a
maximum security psychiatric hospital. After all, it was the Lords of
the Outer Planes who gave humanity lawyers in the first place.

Respectfully yours,



pp. J. Arthur Hastur, LL.B., B.C.L, B.D


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: surfbaud@NO-SPAM.waverider.co.uk (Dave Hemming)

Reply
Marius
4/13/2015 05:25:09 am

I thought a plot twist in the descent is that there were no monsters and it was one of them who'd snapped?

Reply

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