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I have Dog Soldiers on dvd because I liked it enough. I didn't see the Cave because of the premise but now I'm wondering about this flick. If anyone sees it let me know how it is. From the interview I know the U.S. version has a different ending.
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw13332.html
British director Neil Marshall discovered he had a fan following after visiting Comic-Con International in San Diego recently. It turns out many people had already seen his film The Descent even before its release in the United States, and many of them had already seen the British ending, which is different from the one that Americans will see, although no less shocking.
Described as "Deliverance goes underground," The Descent is the story of six women on a thrill-seeking adventure into a deep cave that no one has ever explored. The cast is a group of relatively unknown but talented actresses, who Marshall accompanied on a real-life caving trip to help inform their roles. Marshall sat down with Science Fiction Weekly at an office tower in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Neil Marshall, you have certainly tapped into a great fear with this movie, the fear of the dark and being confined.
Marshall: You know, I was very surprised that so many people had claustrophobia. I didn't know it was so universal, but people tell me that a lot after the screenings in England. I wanted to have something terrifying, and that seemed very terrifying to me.
It seems pretty scary with the camera closing in on all those tight spaces in the caves. You get a sense that you're suffocating.
Marshall: That was the intention exactly, to show how confined and enclosed it was. It wasn't easy to do with the cameras, though.
Do you have a fear of tight spaces?
Marshall: Claustrophobia yes, I do have it. It freaks me out to be in such tight spaces, but it was even more interesting to have an actor who also suffers from it acutely.
Shauna Macdonald, who plays the lead Sarah, said she has claustrophobia. So when you went caving with the actors, did you and her freak out?
Marshall: Well, of course, I was more macho then, because I had to take care of the one who was very claustrophobic. After all, I was underground with a group of very beautiful women, so I couldn't be too freaked out. I may have been more scared or shown it if I was with a group of guys. Shauna is genuinely claustrophobic, and that worked well for her part. She was truly terrified in some of the scenes where she is stuck in the rocks.
Where did you go spelunking?
Marshall: In the U.K. There are many great caves there, as there are in the United States.
Now, you've said that this is sort of a second part to your last movie, Dog Soldiers, somehow?
Marshall: It's not the same story or any of the same characters, but in that one it was six guys overcoming an obstacle, and now it's six women.
So it's not really a sequel—
Marshall: It is a sister film to Dog Soldiers. There are six women trapped and facing a common foe, but rather than bond together in the face of adversity, the women turn against each other and their relationships disintegrate. It's about a descent into madness.
Did you write the way the women reacted any differently than the men?
Marshall: No, not really. Actually, this script could just as well have been six men and played exactly the same way. There was nothing that was very different between the men and the women and how they would react. These are civilians, after all, they are not soldiers, and it's all about how they are going to survive. They have the human desire to survive, and sometimes turn into animals along the way. [He laughs.]
Why is there two different versions of the movie? Why is the ending different in Britain?
Marshall: We had the time to put on a different ending because we were delaying the release of the movie here because The Cave was coming out at the same time. So this has been playing in Britain, and when we screened it for American audiences, they wanted a more hopeful or upbeat ending than what I presented in the British version. I had the luxury of having two different endings.
And which one do you like best?
Marshall: [Laughs.] I prefer the British version. It is more unrelentingly dark, and it's hard on Sarah. We don't really know if the British audiences would like the American ending because we never tested both, but I like the darker ending more. Both endings are pretty dark.
I guess the American version allows for a sequel?
Marshall: They both do, really. But I'm not ready for that.
The women spent a lot of time preparing for this role, to look like real thrill-seekers.
Marshall: Yes, they did, and it required a lot of physical action, so they had to be in good shape. Everyone was happy to do the caving training, because it helped them get their characters right.
Why do you think your werewolf film Dog Soldiers didn't do so well here?
Marshall: It did find its audience on the Internet, and there was certainly a buzz about it. It was just bad luck with the theatrical release. It's nice that it found a cult following, and people do champion the movie and get the word out. They see it on DVD.
Some of the bloody scenes and bone-breaking seemed really graphic and really made people squirm in the screening. Did you have a medical consultant to make that all look real?
Marshall: We had special-effects people who knew what it looked like. They looked at accident scenes and medical photos and made it look real after they found out what I wanted. The actress who plays Sam [MyAnna Buring] said her dad was a doctor, and she brought some of her expertise to the role and made it look even more real.
Did the studio ever ask you to tone it down?
Marshall: No, not at all, they didn't ask that. It is interesting to see a movie with that much blood and have it be all women. That's different, too.
I heard you used two of your actors, Craig Conway and Les Simpson, from Dog Soldiers in this movie as the creatures.
Marshall: Yes, now they are crawlers. I wanted actors rather than dancers to play the crawlers. I used two of the guys who have been in all of my movies. They are my lucky charms. The makeup they have allows them to express themselves fully, both physically and with facial expressions. Putting actors in the makeup and costumes was ideal.
We also heard the set was pretty incredible, four times the size of the James Bond ice cavern set?
Marshall: It was big, and I tip my hat to the production designer, Simon Bowles, who had the entire cave system to design. We built six caves.
Can you talk about your next movie, Doomsday?
Marshall: Doomsday is a futuristic action thriller. We're in preproduction. A group of people team together to try to prevent the extinction of the human race. It will be a dark, brutal action adventure. I will use some of the actors from Dog Soldiers and some from The Descent, no doubt. It's kind of an Escape from L.A., except set in the U.K. It will be a post-apocalyptic future and will include futuristic knights and involve car chases. There is a disease that threatens the remainder of humanity.
How do you tap into what scares people?
Marshall: You look at primal fears. There are a few that scare a lot of people, like the dark, fear of heights, fear of falling, claustrophobia. There are things happening in the world today, the wars, the bird flu, things like that that scare people. You can find it and use it.
I heard that you pulled a great trick on the actresses and didn't show the crawlers to them until you were filming.
Marshall: I wasn't sure what their reactions would be, whether they would really come across as frightening, so I waited until we were filming before I even showed it to them. It saved up some of the angst for them. The guys were hidden in a corner in the dark. When they saw the creatures and screamed, that was the first time they saw them, and those reactions are real. They went running, they were repulsed, and they were screaming. Then they all started laughing.
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw13332.html
British director Neil Marshall discovered he had a fan following after visiting Comic-Con International in San Diego recently. It turns out many people had already seen his film The Descent even before its release in the United States, and many of them had already seen the British ending, which is different from the one that Americans will see, although no less shocking.
Described as "Deliverance goes underground," The Descent is the story of six women on a thrill-seeking adventure into a deep cave that no one has ever explored. The cast is a group of relatively unknown but talented actresses, who Marshall accompanied on a real-life caving trip to help inform their roles. Marshall sat down with Science Fiction Weekly at an office tower in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Neil Marshall, you have certainly tapped into a great fear with this movie, the fear of the dark and being confined.
Marshall: You know, I was very surprised that so many people had claustrophobia. I didn't know it was so universal, but people tell me that a lot after the screenings in England. I wanted to have something terrifying, and that seemed very terrifying to me.
It seems pretty scary with the camera closing in on all those tight spaces in the caves. You get a sense that you're suffocating.
Marshall: That was the intention exactly, to show how confined and enclosed it was. It wasn't easy to do with the cameras, though.
Do you have a fear of tight spaces?
Marshall: Claustrophobia yes, I do have it. It freaks me out to be in such tight spaces, but it was even more interesting to have an actor who also suffers from it acutely.
Shauna Macdonald, who plays the lead Sarah, said she has claustrophobia. So when you went caving with the actors, did you and her freak out?
Marshall: Well, of course, I was more macho then, because I had to take care of the one who was very claustrophobic. After all, I was underground with a group of very beautiful women, so I couldn't be too freaked out. I may have been more scared or shown it if I was with a group of guys. Shauna is genuinely claustrophobic, and that worked well for her part. She was truly terrified in some of the scenes where she is stuck in the rocks.
Where did you go spelunking?
Marshall: In the U.K. There are many great caves there, as there are in the United States.
Now, you've said that this is sort of a second part to your last movie, Dog Soldiers, somehow?
Marshall: It's not the same story or any of the same characters, but in that one it was six guys overcoming an obstacle, and now it's six women.
So it's not really a sequel—
Marshall: It is a sister film to Dog Soldiers. There are six women trapped and facing a common foe, but rather than bond together in the face of adversity, the women turn against each other and their relationships disintegrate. It's about a descent into madness.
Did you write the way the women reacted any differently than the men?
Marshall: No, not really. Actually, this script could just as well have been six men and played exactly the same way. There was nothing that was very different between the men and the women and how they would react. These are civilians, after all, they are not soldiers, and it's all about how they are going to survive. They have the human desire to survive, and sometimes turn into animals along the way. [He laughs.]
Why is there two different versions of the movie? Why is the ending different in Britain?
Marshall: We had the time to put on a different ending because we were delaying the release of the movie here because The Cave was coming out at the same time. So this has been playing in Britain, and when we screened it for American audiences, they wanted a more hopeful or upbeat ending than what I presented in the British version. I had the luxury of having two different endings.
And which one do you like best?
Marshall: [Laughs.] I prefer the British version. It is more unrelentingly dark, and it's hard on Sarah. We don't really know if the British audiences would like the American ending because we never tested both, but I like the darker ending more. Both endings are pretty dark.
I guess the American version allows for a sequel?
Marshall: They both do, really. But I'm not ready for that.
The women spent a lot of time preparing for this role, to look like real thrill-seekers.
Marshall: Yes, they did, and it required a lot of physical action, so they had to be in good shape. Everyone was happy to do the caving training, because it helped them get their characters right.
Why do you think your werewolf film Dog Soldiers didn't do so well here?
Marshall: It did find its audience on the Internet, and there was certainly a buzz about it. It was just bad luck with the theatrical release. It's nice that it found a cult following, and people do champion the movie and get the word out. They see it on DVD.
Some of the bloody scenes and bone-breaking seemed really graphic and really made people squirm in the screening. Did you have a medical consultant to make that all look real?
Marshall: We had special-effects people who knew what it looked like. They looked at accident scenes and medical photos and made it look real after they found out what I wanted. The actress who plays Sam [MyAnna Buring] said her dad was a doctor, and she brought some of her expertise to the role and made it look even more real.
Did the studio ever ask you to tone it down?
Marshall: No, not at all, they didn't ask that. It is interesting to see a movie with that much blood and have it be all women. That's different, too.
I heard you used two of your actors, Craig Conway and Les Simpson, from Dog Soldiers in this movie as the creatures.
Marshall: Yes, now they are crawlers. I wanted actors rather than dancers to play the crawlers. I used two of the guys who have been in all of my movies. They are my lucky charms. The makeup they have allows them to express themselves fully, both physically and with facial expressions. Putting actors in the makeup and costumes was ideal.
We also heard the set was pretty incredible, four times the size of the James Bond ice cavern set?
Marshall: It was big, and I tip my hat to the production designer, Simon Bowles, who had the entire cave system to design. We built six caves.
Can you talk about your next movie, Doomsday?
Marshall: Doomsday is a futuristic action thriller. We're in preproduction. A group of people team together to try to prevent the extinction of the human race. It will be a dark, brutal action adventure. I will use some of the actors from Dog Soldiers and some from The Descent, no doubt. It's kind of an Escape from L.A., except set in the U.K. It will be a post-apocalyptic future and will include futuristic knights and involve car chases. There is a disease that threatens the remainder of humanity.
How do you tap into what scares people?
Marshall: You look at primal fears. There are a few that scare a lot of people, like the dark, fear of heights, fear of falling, claustrophobia. There are things happening in the world today, the wars, the bird flu, things like that that scare people. You can find it and use it.
I heard that you pulled a great trick on the actresses and didn't show the crawlers to them until you were filming.
Marshall: I wasn't sure what their reactions would be, whether they would really come across as frightening, so I waited until we were filming before I even showed it to them. It saved up some of the angst for them. The guys were hidden in a corner in the dark. When they saw the creatures and screamed, that was the first time they saw them, and those reactions are real. They went running, they were repulsed, and they were screaming. Then they all started laughing.
