Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / Feminist Movie Friday: The Descent

Transcript

Feminist Movie Friday: The Descent · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
0:08
Speaker 1: I've never told you production of I heart rate here.
0:18
Speaker 1: It is time for another feminist movie. Friday July Edition.
0:23
Speaker 1: This is kind of an outdoorsy movie. Yeah, I guess so,
0:28
Speaker 1: I don't know it would be want to be in
0:30
Speaker 1: like a cave during this time. I guess it's colder.
0:32
Speaker 1: Maybe have you ever gone caving? I have not. Wait, no,
0:36
Speaker 1: I have not. I have gone down through caves one
0:40
Speaker 1: of those like really big nice caves where they use
0:43
Speaker 1: it for music or show, which is one of the
0:47
Speaker 1: things they're making fun of in this movie. Yes, as
0:49
Speaker 1: they should. It's also good like I have a good
0:53
Speaker 1: friends who are part of that world. And when I
0:56
Speaker 1: whenever I said splunking, they got really mad at me,
0:59
Speaker 1: getting mad at me. Oh I see, yes, I too
1:03
Speaker 1: have never like gone caving in this sense. I've gone
1:06
Speaker 1: blackwater rafting, which is when you go white basically rafting
1:10
Speaker 1: through a cave. And then I've gone in. I've gone
1:13
Speaker 1: into caves that aren't I mean, they were touristy, but
1:16
Speaker 1: you did have to crawl and maybe like maneuver, but
1:19
Speaker 1: it wasn't like I didn't use a rope or that
1:22
Speaker 1: there was nothing like that that I've never done, and
1:25
Speaker 1: I lay down. I think we've talked about this before.
1:28
Speaker 1: I mean, I've done the very embarrassing thing they make
1:30
Speaker 1: you do in elementary school. We have to climb up
1:32
Speaker 1: that wall and everyone's watching you. Oh yeah, I did
1:38
Speaker 1: not do well with those. It's so embarrassing. And there's
1:41
Speaker 1: that moment where everyone, it feels like everyone including you,
1:43
Speaker 1: knows you're not going to make it any further, but
1:46
Speaker 1: no one's willing to say right and not. Your body
1:50
Speaker 1: is hardening, as well as getting the worst weggie ever.
1:53
Speaker 1: So embarrassed and everything. Yeah, and everything's really heightened because
1:56
Speaker 1: this is tightened up. I'll crotch and there's bun is
2:00
Speaker 1: everywhere you all right, I don't know. I did go
2:02
Speaker 1: on a date to your rock climbing place once and
2:05
Speaker 1: the metal piece hit me in the head and it
2:07
Speaker 1: was really it's really awkward because I felt so bad
2:11
Speaker 1: about it and I was like, this is just it's fine.
2:14
Speaker 1: It was bound to happen. Um. So today we are
2:17
Speaker 1: talking about the Descent, which content warning in case you
2:23
Speaker 1: haven't seen it, we are going to be talking about
2:25
Speaker 1: some gory stuff. It's a horror movie, which reminds me
2:30
Speaker 1: the first time. I actually avoided this movie for a while,
2:33
Speaker 1: and I came to it late in the game because
2:35
Speaker 1: I had seen still images of it and it was
2:39
Speaker 1: usually the cover or the image of one of the
2:43
Speaker 1: women covered in blood, and I was thinking that I
2:48
Speaker 1: I misunderstood, and I thought it might be sort of
2:50
Speaker 1: one of those like um torture films or like a
2:54
Speaker 1: sexploitation film or something, and that's not my thing. So
2:57
Speaker 1: I avoided it. But my friend Katie, who I've had
3:01
Speaker 1: on the show, her family super conservative, very religious, her
3:06
Speaker 1: mom like sweet, small, very like active woman, loves documentaries,
3:14
Speaker 1: and uh, she ordered The Descent through her her satellite
3:21
Speaker 1: because at the time I was so jealous because they
3:24
Speaker 1: had like satellite and could get all those channels, and
3:28
Speaker 1: she thought it was a documentary. And she, Katie tells me,
3:33
Speaker 1: she made it until like the first person got killed
3:37
Speaker 1: before she she made it through the girl breaking her leg. Yes,
3:47
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty And also like just the way it opens,
3:51
Speaker 1: I'm thinking she somehow missed the beginning, so she missed
3:55
Speaker 1: the whole pipes and the herd dream of her getting
4:00
Speaker 1: stabbed in the which was like a jump scare for sure.
4:04
Speaker 1: I don't know, like maybe she just sort of fast forward.
4:09
Speaker 1: I don't know. As someone who has made a mistake
4:11
Speaker 1: like this before, I am puzzled as to how this
4:14
Speaker 1: could have happened as she went that far into because
4:17
Speaker 1: it's just like that's the climax, but it goes fit quickly, right.
4:21
Speaker 1: And also I mean that whole like camp before they
4:26
Speaker 1: go into the cave, where there at the cabin and
4:28
Speaker 1: they're like having a fun time. There's a lot of
4:30
Speaker 1: stuff that happens in that scene that I don't think
4:32
Speaker 1: she would have been very happy with. Um, so that's fair,
4:37
Speaker 1: but it is one of my very favorite like kind
4:40
Speaker 1: of shading Freuda. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. That's sad and
4:45
Speaker 1: hilarious because she's probably haunted by it too. She's like,
4:47
Speaker 1: what am I watching? What am I watching? Speaking of? What? Yes,
4:52
Speaker 1: we're talking about The Descent. It is a two thousand
4:55
Speaker 1: five British horror movie written and directed by Neil Marshall.
5:00
Speaker 1: It was a critical and financial success and it's still
5:02
Speaker 1: on many people's number one horror movie list. Like that
5:06
Speaker 1: is the one that scares the most. I've been told
5:09
Speaker 1: about this movie a lot when I was going through
5:11
Speaker 1: my whole like I think it was about five years ago,
5:15
Speaker 1: and I started to really enjoying horror movies because for
5:17
Speaker 1: the longest time like, nope, these nights, these are nightmares.
5:19
Speaker 1: I don't like it. And I was like, well, actually
5:21
Speaker 1: I do enjoy this. This was everybody's number one on
5:24
Speaker 1: THEIRS and I never understood why. And it went on
5:26
Speaker 1: to spawn a sequel in two thousand nine called The
5:29
Speaker 1: Dissent Part two. Did you watch this? I have seen
5:32
Speaker 1: the just sent part to you. I've seen it multiple times,
5:35
Speaker 1: multiple times. Do you know what that much? Or you
5:37
Speaker 1: just happened to watch it? Um, I'm somebody who is
5:41
Speaker 1: very guilty of UM maybe starting to read a fan
5:46
Speaker 1: fiction in the middle of a movie or something, so
5:48
Speaker 1: like I'll see the first half and like I really
5:50
Speaker 1: know the first half or you know, something like that.
5:52
Speaker 1: I mean, it was enjoyable enough. It was not something
5:55
Speaker 1: like I would sit down and watch probably, but like
5:58
Speaker 1: if I have it on the background, if I'm just
6:00
Speaker 1: for a cheesy heart I don't know, cheesy kind of
6:02
Speaker 1: cheesy horri beyond in the background. It was a good
6:06
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that very very briefly, and yeah,
6:10
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Samantha, this is like if you
6:13
Speaker 1: look up feminist horror movies that just harmonies, but like
6:15
Speaker 1: feminist harm movies, this movie comes up a lot. This
6:17
Speaker 1: was several listeners suggested it. I think we've talked about
6:22
Speaker 1: it on the show. But I'm not someone I'm not claustrophobic,
6:26
Speaker 1: but but I do. I'm like on the verge of claustrophobic,
6:30
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. I don't think I could be
6:32
Speaker 1: like diagnosed, but it makes me very, very uncomfortable. It
6:36
Speaker 1: makes me really nervous seeing scenes and thinking you can't move. Yeah,
6:41
Speaker 1: that's this is why I think I remember because I
6:43
Speaker 1: told you as we were preparing for it, I was like, oh,
6:44
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it, and I can't remember why. I
6:47
Speaker 1: think I blocked that part out, even though I know
6:49
Speaker 1: it is a part of this movie, and that's part
6:51
Speaker 1: of the suspense in the horrors, like people prays on
6:53
Speaker 1: people's fears of darkness, of never ending holes and being
6:57
Speaker 1: stuck in small space. I have a lot of weird
7:01
Speaker 1: part of that, uh, And I acknowledge that when it
7:03
Speaker 1: comes to my fear of factors like that, I have
7:05
Speaker 1: unreasonable fears like things coming to life and getting me.
7:08
Speaker 1: I'm just sure of that. Not being able to see
7:11
Speaker 1: in the water one of those. So for those stupid
7:14
Speaker 1: little rides that we do, they have water rise. I
7:16
Speaker 1: can't stand it. I don't like being on the edge
7:18
Speaker 1: because I'm afraid something's gonna come and grab me because
7:20
Speaker 1: I can't see. So that that plays into this as
7:23
Speaker 1: well as the small space thing that is not unreasonable,
7:26
Speaker 1: I don't think, but that whole thing where she's actually
7:29
Speaker 1: stuck and having a panic attack, I almost had to
7:31
Speaker 1: fast forward it and like stop because I was like, yeah,
7:33
Speaker 1: this is like as I'm talking about in my heart
7:35
Speaker 1: starting to race a little bit because I can't. So
7:38
Speaker 1: I tried to do this. I took classes because you know,
7:41
Speaker 1: if you really want to do this right, you need
7:43
Speaker 1: to take classes. You need to you need to understand
7:45
Speaker 1: what's happening. So I'm gonna pretend that they did these
7:48
Speaker 1: women did, and not just like walk into this and
7:51
Speaker 1: be like I can do this for sure, but like
7:53
Speaker 1: I went and take these classes, and as we were
7:55
Speaker 1: sitting there talking about things and they were showing videos
7:57
Speaker 1: and then how small the spaces were, I was like, no, nope,
8:01
Speaker 1: I think I did two classes and walked out. Yeah. Yeah,
8:04
Speaker 1: this movie is a horrifying Samantha listeners just made the
8:07
Speaker 1: stake of watching this before she went to bed last
8:11
Speaker 1: I kind of forgot and I was like, look, I
8:13
Speaker 1: want to I want to go to bed Albumine as well.
8:15
Speaker 1: Because I'm dead with the work. I'll just watch it
8:17
Speaker 1: in my room. Sat there. I was like, oh, no,
8:20
Speaker 1: I've made a huge mistake. No, oh no, I watched
8:28
Speaker 1: it before I went to bed. But it's all okay.
8:32
Speaker 1: So Marshall and his business partner deliberately chose to cast
8:35
Speaker 1: all women because he believed they were underrepresented in the
8:38
Speaker 1: horror genre. On top of that, he asked for advice
8:41
Speaker 1: from female friends about friendships between women in an attempt
8:45
Speaker 1: to avoid cliches. The movie stars Sean McDonald, Natalie Mendoza,
8:50
Speaker 1: Alex Street, Sasha Moulder, Nora Jane Noon, and Mayanna Burring
8:55
Speaker 1: as friends going on a caving trip. The film opens
8:59
Speaker 1: with a whitewater rafting trip between Sarah played by McDonald,
9:03
Speaker 1: Juno played by Mendoza, and Beth played by Reid. After
9:07
Speaker 1: they are having this lovely time, After they get to
9:09
Speaker 1: the end um, Sarah and her husband and daughter are
9:12
Speaker 1: involved in a car accident and only Sarah survives. This
9:15
Speaker 1: is where the pipe yeah submission comes in. So it's
9:19
Speaker 1: pretty horrifying. And if you haven't watched this movie and
9:22
Speaker 1: you plan to watch this movie after the fact, be prepared. Also,
9:26
Speaker 1: that's also ridiculous fear because I've actually had you know that,
9:29
Speaker 1: that's kind of like that final destination level, like, oh
9:31
Speaker 1: my god, that thing's gonna kip me so many fears.
9:35
Speaker 1: So once a year has passed, friends Sarah, Juno, Beth, Sam, Rebecca,
9:40
Speaker 1: and Holly meet up to go caving in North Carolina,
9:43
Speaker 1: which is actually not in North Carolina. They just pretendedly
9:45
Speaker 1: they North Carolina made me laugh. So when they entered
9:49
Speaker 1: the cave, Juno offers Sarah an apology for not being
9:53
Speaker 1: there for her in the wake of the loss of
9:55
Speaker 1: her family um and Sarah is very quiet, dismissive and
9:59
Speaker 1: doesn't respond to and more she's trying to move on
10:01
Speaker 1: past it. The group traverses a narrow, yes, very narrow,
10:06
Speaker 1: claustrophobic passageway that collapses behind them after a really intense
10:10
Speaker 1: scene of her being stuck and having a panic attack.
10:12
Speaker 1: Like I said, and it got me, it got me,
10:15
Speaker 1: which leads to attends confrontation between the group where Juno
10:19
Speaker 1: No Juno reveals that she lied when she told them
10:22
Speaker 1: they were exploring a fully discovered route, but she instead
10:26
Speaker 1: led them into an unmapped cave system, hoping they could
10:29
Speaker 1: discover and name it. This means that the prospects of
10:33
Speaker 1: rescue are pretty much zero as uh. She leaves behind
10:38
Speaker 1: the map a they didn't report where they were going
10:41
Speaker 1: to the Yeah, and the person who reported it thought
10:44
Speaker 1: they were going to a different cave and that's what
10:46
Speaker 1: they reported. Huh uh, And Juno claims she did it
10:50
Speaker 1: to mend her and Sarah's relationship. Yeah. The group presses
10:56
Speaker 1: on in search of her way out, encountering really old
10:59
Speaker 1: cating equipment and cave paintings that suggest that others have
11:01
Speaker 1: been here before and that there is an exit. When
11:05
Speaker 1: Holly thinks she sees sunlight, she rushes towards it and falls,
11:09
Speaker 1: breaking a leg also a pretty gruesome sane. While the
11:13
Speaker 1: group argues about what to do, Sarah goes off for
11:15
Speaker 1: a bit and witnesses a pale, fleshy humanoid creature drinking
11:19
Speaker 1: water before it crawls off and these creatures are called crawlers.
11:23
Speaker 1: They never say that in the movie, I don't think,
11:25
Speaker 1: but that's what everybody calls him. Later, the group uncovers
11:29
Speaker 1: just a lot of appears to be animal bones before
11:33
Speaker 1: they are attacked by one of these creatures, resulting in
11:36
Speaker 1: Holly's death after it rips through her throat. The group
11:40
Speaker 1: separates and panic Sarah falls down another hole and is
11:43
Speaker 1: knocked unconscious. Juno pursues the crawler in an attempt to
11:46
Speaker 1: save Holly's body, killing the crawler with a pickaxe. In
11:50
Speaker 1: a state of adrenaline, she accidentally hits Beth in the
11:54
Speaker 1: neck with the axe. Beth grabs Juno's necklace, falling backwards
11:58
Speaker 1: and pleading that Juno stay with her. But Juno please
12:01
Speaker 1: and shock right. So. Sarah regains consciousness in a cave
12:05
Speaker 1: of the animal bones and carcasses, just in time to
12:08
Speaker 1: see Holly ripped apart and eaten by the crawlers. She
12:11
Speaker 1: stays still to evade their attention. Meanwhile, Juno finds cave
12:16
Speaker 1: paintings that seem to indicate an exit before she reunites
12:19
Speaker 1: with Sam and Rebecca, who have figured out that the
12:22
Speaker 1: creatures are blind and depend on sound. Um and Juno
12:25
Speaker 1: shares the information about the potential exit with them, but
12:29
Speaker 1: will not leave until they find Sarah. And I didn't
12:32
Speaker 1: really think the scene was really nice, not notice necessarily
12:34
Speaker 1: in the fact that all the hell has broken loose,
12:37
Speaker 1: but that uh, Sam and Rebecca are cleaning to each
12:41
Speaker 1: other and really prospective of each other. Yes, says sisters,
12:45
Speaker 1: and it's obvious that their relationships are closed. Of course,
12:48
Speaker 1: we don't mention the fact that, you know, when they
12:50
Speaker 1: were climbing, she's like cuts her hand, which, by the way,
12:54
Speaker 1: I felt that, I felt that everything about that when
12:57
Speaker 1: the rope slides out of our hands because they have
12:59
Speaker 1: to rescue Juno. But yeah, I did like that scene.
13:03
Speaker 1: I thought it was sweet. Um and Sarah discovers a
13:06
Speaker 1: dying Beth, who tells her Juno attacked her and then
13:09
Speaker 1: left her to die and give Sarah Juno's necklace. Of course,
13:14
Speaker 1: Sarah realizes that the Nicholas was a good from her
13:16
Speaker 1: husband when Beth says Paul when she's holding that so
13:20
Speaker 1: the best new is the best new from the beginning,
13:23
Speaker 1: and that he and Juno were having an affair, which
13:26
Speaker 1: is kind of implied at the very beginning where you
13:29
Speaker 1: see him taking off her helmet and they're just staring
13:31
Speaker 1: a little too closely. Yeah, like, why don't you believe
13:37
Speaker 1: Sarah will take care of this? Yeah? And then of
13:43
Speaker 1: at best desperate request, Sarah kills Beth by bashing her
13:46
Speaker 1: head with a rock. Of course, this is after she
13:48
Speaker 1: tells Sarah but not to trust Juno, which is the
13:52
Speaker 1: whole different thing, And yeah, that seems bad. The noise
13:56
Speaker 1: draws several callers to the location, but Sarah is able
13:59
Speaker 1: to kill the them and parted by staying still in
14:01
Speaker 1: a pool of blood, and she merges absolutely soaking in blood,
14:04
Speaker 1: which was reminiscent of Carry to Me. Things are going
14:08
Speaker 1: great for Juno, Rebecca and Sam Um They're fleeing from
14:11
Speaker 1: a group of crawlers when they arrive at a chasm,
14:15
Speaker 1: and Sam, poor Sam tams to cross it, but is
14:18
Speaker 1: ambushed by a crawler who is on the ceiling and
14:20
Speaker 1: then kills her and leaves her hanging over the drop. Yeah,
14:23
Speaker 1: that was really sad. Rebecca is dragged away and eaten,
14:25
Speaker 1: so Juno tries to cross using Sam's body, instead falls
14:30
Speaker 1: into the water, fights another crawler, and then climbs back up,
14:34
Speaker 1: where she's reunited with Sarah. Who hasks her about Beth.
14:38
Speaker 1: You know, hey, Juno Beth. Yeah, and Juno tells her
14:41
Speaker 1: that she saw Beth die. The pair fight off a
14:44
Speaker 1: group of crawlers like they do have like a bad
14:46
Speaker 1: moment together, like we're going to kill them before so
14:50
Speaker 1: reveals that she knows what happened to Beth and about
14:53
Speaker 1: the affair between Juno and Sarah's husband, which was a
14:56
Speaker 1: nice interaction. They did a good job in acting that.
14:58
Speaker 1: The face. There's a lot of should because I think
15:01
Speaker 1: Sarah did one ward would just say one word at
15:03
Speaker 1: a time. She drops the necklace that comes out of
15:06
Speaker 1: her fist and yeah, which, by the way, on the
15:10
Speaker 1: necklace it says love each day, which Sarah says at
15:13
Speaker 1: the beginning of the scene, saying that that's where her
15:15
Speaker 1: husband used to say so obvious. Obvious. So she drops
15:19
Speaker 1: that necklace, lets her know, I know, I know what
15:23
Speaker 1: you did, and Sarah his Juno in the leg with
15:26
Speaker 1: a pick axe. Oh yeah, it's really fierce, and leaves
15:28
Speaker 1: her crawling towards the light as Juno screams. However, Sarah
15:33
Speaker 1: gets knocked out after falling down a hole. Also falling
15:36
Speaker 1: down holes in this there's so many holes. Yes, yes,
15:40
Speaker 1: So this is where we come to the endings, and
15:42
Speaker 1: that's right endings, because there are two, the US one
15:45
Speaker 1: and the UK one. In the US ending, Sarah wakes
15:49
Speaker 1: up and see sunlight and she clambers towards it and
15:52
Speaker 1: she emerges out into the world. She rushes to their
15:56
Speaker 1: car and peels off before stopping them alongside the road
15:59
Speaker 1: to Puke. When she and the camera raise up, there
16:03
Speaker 1: is a hallucination of Juno in the car with her,
16:05
Speaker 1: and Sarah screams, and that's the end. In the UK ending,
16:09
Speaker 1: Sarah wakes in the cave and sees her daughter across
16:12
Speaker 1: from her with candles and a cake, which was sort
16:14
Speaker 1: of this recurring image throughout the movie. Sarah smiles with
16:17
Speaker 1: the audience realizes the candles are Sarah's torch. She is
16:21
Speaker 1: still trapped in the cave and the crawlers are approaching.
16:25
Speaker 1: So the reason there are two endings. According to Entertainment
16:27
Speaker 1: Weekly is America did not like the quote uber hopelessness
16:32
Speaker 1: of the UK. To be fair, you don't know as
16:36
Speaker 1: hopeless she could have made it out, it's true, And
16:40
Speaker 1: that is a good segue into a very brief summation
16:43
Speaker 1: of the plot of the two thousand nine sequel, directed
16:46
Speaker 1: by John Harris, who was involved in the first one.
16:50
Speaker 1: Sarah wakes up unable to remember what happened in the cave,
16:53
Speaker 1: so this is whatever ending she survived, I suppose. Um.
16:57
Speaker 1: She's taken to a hospital where police question her about
17:00
Speaker 1: location of her friends. She agrees to go with the
17:02
Speaker 1: authorities and cave specialists back into the cave system, where
17:06
Speaker 1: she starts experiencing these flashbacks as they discover the bodies
17:08
Speaker 1: of her friends. Some suspect she is behind the deaths
17:12
Speaker 1: of the other women. There's a cave collapse and Sarah
17:16
Speaker 1: regains her memories. Juno arrives to save one of the party,
17:21
Speaker 1: and she's really angry Sarah lef her to die. She
17:25
Speaker 1: tries to kill Sarah, but has stopped one of the group,
17:28
Speaker 1: lying that Sarah came in search of Junos and being like, no,
17:30
Speaker 1: she wanted to come and save you. Juno rulens and
17:34
Speaker 1: later intervenes to save Sarah's life. Sarah later returns the favor,
17:38
Speaker 1: but Juno dies in Sarah's arms. Sarah tries to save
17:41
Speaker 1: another woman in their party, um shouting and running off
17:44
Speaker 1: to give her some time to escape. The woman does escape,
17:48
Speaker 1: but is knocked unconscious by a dude that lives near
17:50
Speaker 1: the cave. When she wakes, a crawler is coming towards her,
17:54
Speaker 1: So the implication being this dude is like the guardian
17:56
Speaker 1: of the cave entrance and is making sure they're like
17:59
Speaker 1: fit and it's kept hidden. Okay, Yeah, he's like the
18:02
Speaker 1: guy at the beginning of a horror movie that's like, oh, no,
18:06
Speaker 1: one goes down that way, and then they did, let's
18:11
Speaker 1: live if you don't see her die, but it's implied
18:14
Speaker 1: that she did, but it's implied that she didn't the
18:16
Speaker 1: first one. So you know, yeah, well, I guess the
18:19
Speaker 1: American version is probably more for the sequels. Probably well,
18:24
Speaker 1: Neil Marshall said he didn't think there was a need
18:26
Speaker 1: first equel and he did not want there to be
18:27
Speaker 1: a sequel, so and the UK ending is his preferred ending.
18:31
Speaker 1: So I think it's like we have two Cannon universes.
18:34
Speaker 1: We've got the one in the UK. Those those UK people,
18:40
Speaker 1: they like sadness. They yes, j K. We did want
18:46
Speaker 1: to talk about some thieves, but first we're gonna pause
18:49
Speaker 1: for a quick break for word from our sponsor, ammer Back.
19:04
Speaker 1: Thank you sponsor. So Perhaps one of the biggest themes,
19:08
Speaker 1: and one of the things that makes this movie stand
19:10
Speaker 1: out in the horror genre is that it's primarily focused
19:14
Speaker 1: on friendships and betrayals between women who don't fit into
19:18
Speaker 1: the traditional horror stereotypes of the horror who gets killed
19:22
Speaker 1: first after we see her naked body and or she
19:24
Speaker 1: has sex and the madonna either the final girl who's
19:28
Speaker 1: pretty traditionally virtuous are the mother figure, but in this
19:33
Speaker 1: we have six friends who are a mix of mothers
19:35
Speaker 1: and not in relationships and not um They are complex,
19:38
Speaker 1: thought out characters, so as the group descends into the
19:42
Speaker 1: womb like oppressive, claustrophobic caves as things get more and
19:46
Speaker 1: more frightening, they don't fall back into the classic Dames
19:49
Speaker 1: one distressed tropes so often employed in horror movies. Uh,
19:54
Speaker 1: there's no man to save them or to take control
19:56
Speaker 1: of the situation. While they are fearful and angry, they
20:00
Speaker 1: do not let it overwhelm them completely. They think critically
20:03
Speaker 1: of possible solutions are ways to move forward, and they're
20:07
Speaker 1: physically strong, capable, and impressive. Yeah, they're very strong. The
20:10
Speaker 1: scenes where they scale across the roof with just carabineers
20:14
Speaker 1: and upper arm strength. Yeah, I was like, I'm dead, sure,
20:17
Speaker 1: no I could. That seems shocks me every time where
20:20
Speaker 1: she's holding on with a one arm reaching into her pocket.
20:24
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, yep, I would definitely have died. And yeah,
20:29
Speaker 1: they're they cause some gnarly deaths for these crawlers, the
20:32
Speaker 1: whole like cooking of the eye. Yeah, the fruit, Like
20:35
Speaker 1: when Juno comes and breaks his neck, I was like, yeah,
20:38
Speaker 1: go ahead, good Yeah. Building off the support of other
20:44
Speaker 1: women and what they pass on, that's another scene that
20:47
Speaker 1: we see through these friendships in the poster and I
20:50
Speaker 1: actually never noticed this, and now I feel quite silly. Um,
20:54
Speaker 1: the characters use their bodies to provide support for each other.
20:58
Speaker 1: But it's it makes us symbol of a female skull.
21:02
Speaker 1: So that's it's a flipping of women being protective and
21:04
Speaker 1: supportive into something that promises horror. Yeah, I've never noticed
21:08
Speaker 1: the skull thing. Now you didn't know. So building on,
21:15
Speaker 1: let's dig into the betrayal, which is at the heart
21:17
Speaker 1: of this film. Obviously, between whether it's the death, whether
21:22
Speaker 1: it's the fair, there's a lot of patrol in here.
21:25
Speaker 1: So Juno's affair with Sarah's husband Juno's character's name comes
21:29
Speaker 1: from Jupiter's wife, who in Greek and Roman mythology was
21:33
Speaker 1: scheming and full of rage. Um. And when Juno decides
21:37
Speaker 1: in a desperate and pretty selfish and impatient attempt to
21:40
Speaker 1: make amends with Sarah, yeah, of course, and this never works,
21:43
Speaker 1: all know the septions that never works By lying to
21:46
Speaker 1: the group about exploring an unknown cave system and leaves
21:50
Speaker 1: behind the map, which just does not make sense. That
21:52
Speaker 1: seems like she wanted to kill somebody, which and and
21:55
Speaker 1: could have saved them, she unknowingly maybe knowingly, dooms them
21:59
Speaker 1: in her arrogance. Again, I get the whole like, let's
22:03
Speaker 1: discover something, okay, leaving a map? Why? Yeah? And I
22:09
Speaker 1: actually did want to have a discussion about this because
22:12
Speaker 1: I think this is a testament to the movie, into
22:15
Speaker 1: the development of the characters, that there's no part of
22:19
Speaker 1: me that thinks that that wasn't a terrible thing to do,
22:22
Speaker 1: a very unwise thing to do. And even if in
22:25
Speaker 1: the best of circumstances they had discovered a new cave,
22:29
Speaker 1: I guarantee you people would still been mad. Maybe they
22:32
Speaker 1: would have been like also happy, but also mad, And
22:37
Speaker 1: it could have gone just like this right, especially when
22:41
Speaker 1: you're supposed to come together to celebrate life, essentially like
22:45
Speaker 1: trying to get her into a better place because she's
22:48
Speaker 1: gone through so much trauma and you trying to do
22:51
Speaker 1: this like you can't do death like level death defying
22:55
Speaker 1: experiences as a way to come together. That's not how
22:58
Speaker 1: this works, right, I mean it is incredibly selfish and arrogant,
23:02
Speaker 1: and I I for some reason, I often think of
23:05
Speaker 1: that line that's in um is that civil war? Civil war,
23:09
Speaker 1: or the woman says like people who have a lot
23:12
Speaker 1: of guilt are the ones that are like very active
23:16
Speaker 1: and like charity and stuff like that. Well, at the
23:19
Speaker 1: end us a separate conversation, but I love I feel
23:21
Speaker 1: like it's sort of that too, where Juno feels very
23:24
Speaker 1: very guilty and just wants to feel better and it's
23:26
Speaker 1: all about herself and she's like feels this such overwoman guilt.
23:31
Speaker 1: But like my point is there's a part of me
23:34
Speaker 1: that I don't hate, you know, like there's some parts
23:38
Speaker 1: of her they're bad. I think that's the thing, is
23:41
Speaker 1: like I don't hate you know. Maybe it's because I'm like, hey,
23:43
Speaker 1: look Asian sister, cool, for get it, but also for
23:47
Speaker 1: the fact that she is trying to be a leader,
23:50
Speaker 1: she is trying to protect some of them. She did
23:52
Speaker 1: try to go find Holly. She was the one that
23:55
Speaker 1: warn't stopped doing this because Holly was probably the most
23:58
Speaker 1: impulsive and running trying to get the places. Had to
24:01
Speaker 1: stop everyone because she almost fell off the side of
24:03
Speaker 1: like she's producted people as well as a leader. Weird
24:08
Speaker 1: little moment of like her doing that stretch at the
24:11
Speaker 1: beginning of the scene, I was like, is that supposed
24:13
Speaker 1: to imply something? I'm confused, what is happening? Impressive, It's
24:18
Speaker 1: funny because we're watching this. I've watched this that. I mean,
24:22
Speaker 1: I was younger, I was probably in college. But for
24:26
Speaker 1: some reason I thought that two of them were together
24:30
Speaker 1: in a romantic relationship. And I think that was probably
24:33
Speaker 1: just me being like I'm not used to seeing women
24:36
Speaker 1: women and trying to put them together. But I kept
24:39
Speaker 1: like that scene in particular, I was like, who is
24:41
Speaker 1: the couple? I can't remember. It turns out there isn't one,
24:44
Speaker 1: but I remember when she was doing I was like,
24:46
Speaker 1: she's showing off or something, or she is showing off
24:48
Speaker 1: but not romantically. Yeah, she showing off because she went
24:52
Speaker 1: running and she did all these things and I'm so
24:53
Speaker 1: in shape and ready to go, right, But yeah, but yeah,
24:57
Speaker 1: but I really liked her character and I didn't want
24:59
Speaker 1: her to die because I feel like the two of them,
25:03
Speaker 1: we're such a strong team. As angry as Sarah was,
25:07
Speaker 1: of course, maybe this could be everything to my own empathies.
25:12
Speaker 1: She didn't deserve to die. No, I'm the same, and
25:15
Speaker 1: I think that's what makes this a good movie, and
25:18
Speaker 1: that shows that the character development is good, because I've
25:20
Speaker 1: seen movies similar to this where I would have hated
25:22
Speaker 1: that character, like you if you got rid of the
25:25
Speaker 1: map and I'm thinking of Blair, which now, but if
25:28
Speaker 1: you had done things like that, which I do think
25:31
Speaker 1: are really things to do, then I would have just
25:34
Speaker 1: hated you. And that's the slot that you fit in,
25:36
Speaker 1: is you're the evil, bad character of this idy. But
25:39
Speaker 1: instead like there, you know, I get really mad at her,
25:41
Speaker 1: and then there are other parts where I'm like, wow,
25:44
Speaker 1: So maybe it's the actress who did it, and she
25:46
Speaker 1: did it so well even with best that her leaving
25:50
Speaker 1: were was yeah but understandable, as well as the fact
25:55
Speaker 1: that it was an accident. It was a complete accident,
25:58
Speaker 1: and she's horrified, and she has much guilt on top
26:01
Speaker 1: of her for this, and it is bad. But again,
26:04
Speaker 1: this is not menacing. It was not her being selfish.
26:07
Speaker 1: It wasn't her being selfish. Tried to push, like it's
26:09
Speaker 1: not someone who pushes someone out the door that they
26:12
Speaker 1: could be saved, right, And I think people are complicated
26:16
Speaker 1: in that way to you where it's certainly a level
26:18
Speaker 1: of selfishness when she says like, I'm not leaving without Sarah.
26:20
Speaker 1: But I do think there's a part of her that
26:22
Speaker 1: was like, no, not leaven, I got her in this situation.
26:26
Speaker 1: I already really royally messed up for life how she feels,
26:30
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to leave without her. And I
26:33
Speaker 1: think it's also interesting because you don't see Paul, Sarah's husband,
26:40
Speaker 1: but for like less than a minute, and I think
26:42
Speaker 1: he only says one thing, and it's I've never read
26:46
Speaker 1: read it like this, but it's implied. I guess that
26:48
Speaker 1: Sarah's husband's guilt about the affair led to the car
26:50
Speaker 1: accident that killed him and Sarah's daughter. So just all
26:53
Speaker 1: this guilt. But it's it's what we've talked about before
26:56
Speaker 1: of like it takes two to cheat, right, So we
27:00
Speaker 1: don't have his characters, so we don't know what was
27:03
Speaker 1: going on or anything. It seems that Sarah was happy
27:06
Speaker 1: and especially you know, loving of the of her family.
27:12
Speaker 1: But like, again, yeah, mad at Juno. It sounds like
27:15
Speaker 1: Guno apologies, but that's fine, but it does take We
27:18
Speaker 1: know Paul was up to this as well, right well,
27:22
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, so you had started already working on
27:25
Speaker 1: this and I read over this before I watched it,
27:28
Speaker 1: So when I read that part, I was like, oh, yeah,
27:30
Speaker 1: I see it now, because it's that weird interaction between
27:33
Speaker 1: you know, at the beginning, like he's pretty must caressing
27:35
Speaker 1: her face weirdly and there he's thinking. It's obviously he's thinking.
27:40
Speaker 1: In the car, she touches them and he jarks away,
27:43
Speaker 1: which is kind of that implication of that guilt, uh,
27:46
Speaker 1: and she's like you okay, and he's trying to look
27:50
Speaker 1: at her lovingly to prove that he was okay, and
27:52
Speaker 1: that's when the accident happens. So yeah, I think that
27:55
Speaker 1: makes sense that it was implied. But yeah, with the
27:58
Speaker 1: the whole level, Juno fells due to her arrogance. She's
28:03
Speaker 1: caught by her friends but hurts them in the process,
28:05
Speaker 1: which it's like she continues to make that bad decision
28:09
Speaker 1: so selfish. All of this is for selfishness. But this
28:12
Speaker 1: is how she handles saying I'm sorry. Um, And she
28:17
Speaker 1: runs from the damage and pain she causes. Again, we've
28:20
Speaker 1: seen that in the way she talks about not being
28:23
Speaker 1: there for Sarah, or when Sarah first wakes up in
28:25
Speaker 1: the hospital, she runs literally runs away from her because
28:28
Speaker 1: she's like crying and leaves. Uh. And she also experiences
28:32
Speaker 1: the second hand trauma. Yeah. Yeah, And I mean again,
28:36
Speaker 1: we don't know what this relationship between either of these
28:39
Speaker 1: women was were with Paul, but she, as she says
28:42
Speaker 1: in the movie, like everybody lost something in that crash
28:45
Speaker 1: that day, So for all we know, she was really mourning.
28:48
Speaker 1: That doesn't excuse her behavior at all, but it is yeah, no, no,
28:52
Speaker 1: not not okay at all. Um. And yeah, she says
28:56
Speaker 1: at one point like why can't things go back to
28:58
Speaker 1: where the way they were? Um? When Juno first sees
29:02
Speaker 1: Sarah alive, covered in blood, she asked, like, what happened
29:05
Speaker 1: to you? It sort of feels to me like she's
29:07
Speaker 1: asking about the trauma of like facing the damage that
29:10
Speaker 1: she helped cause at least a little of like finally
29:12
Speaker 1: looking Sarah in the face, realizing things aren't just going
29:15
Speaker 1: to go back to how they were, right, Yeah, And
29:18
Speaker 1: and I did want to put in here. While we
29:20
Speaker 1: do see this element of cattiness between women, we do
29:23
Speaker 1: see other moments of tender friendship and fierce loyalty. And
29:26
Speaker 1: even the cattiness part is like less catty and more
29:28
Speaker 1: like a legit argument, right, little moment of oh my god,
29:37
Speaker 1: we're gonna die because this is happening, right exactly, not
29:41
Speaker 1: so much like you. It's just I think when I
29:45
Speaker 1: heard the description for it, and when you think about
29:48
Speaker 1: like the cheating element, there's just a kneejerk part of
29:50
Speaker 1: me that's like, oh, it's about catty women again fighting
29:52
Speaker 1: over a man. But it really isn't that. But we
29:56
Speaker 1: do want to talk about something we talked about a
29:57
Speaker 1: lot on here, which is female revenge and anger. But
30:01
Speaker 1: first we're gonna pause for one more quick break for
30:02
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor m E went back, thank you sponsored.
30:19
Speaker 1: So yes, we also see what happens when a woman's
30:22
Speaker 1: grief is twisted into a vengeance. Um the visual of
30:25
Speaker 1: Sarah being covered in blood and in the original ending,
30:28
Speaker 1: jaxaposed against her smiling softly at her daughter is a
30:31
Speaker 1: good representation of this is a very gray visual, right,
30:37
Speaker 1: and a part of this two is something we've discussed
30:39
Speaker 1: at length trauma and grief. Both Sarah and Juno are
30:42
Speaker 1: grieving the loss of Sarah's husband and Sarah's grieving her daughter.
30:46
Speaker 1: This and and Judo's need to pretty much get rid
30:49
Speaker 1: of her guilt at Sarah's grief because again, yes, this
30:54
Speaker 1: is partly our fault um which propels the whole storyline
30:58
Speaker 1: of hard needing to fix it, so this is way
31:00
Speaker 1: of fixing it. Cave could also represent this as well,
31:04
Speaker 1: descending into the darkness of grief and the monsters it
31:06
Speaker 1: can reveal within us or eventually will always come out
31:10
Speaker 1: and haunt you really um and could slow eat away
31:16
Speaker 1: at you. Literally. The original ending suggests that we can
31:20
Speaker 1: never fully escape by trauma, and the blood, the bones,
31:23
Speaker 1: the darkness, the primordial design of the crawlers, all of
31:26
Speaker 1: it is evocative of the darkness of traumas in their
31:31
Speaker 1: search for their exit and the light in the search
31:33
Speaker 1: for healing. Yeah, I never I think I watched this
31:38
Speaker 1: before I started really doing my feminist interpretations of movies,
31:43
Speaker 1: so i'd never really thought about it in this way,
31:45
Speaker 1: but it makes a lot a lot of sense to
31:47
Speaker 1: me of it being just this sort of like gory
31:50
Speaker 1: horror representation of trauma and grief and trying to heal,
31:56
Speaker 1: like that search for healing, right, and all of this
31:59
Speaker 1: is like it's they're blinded, kind of like the Crawlers
32:01
Speaker 1: or the monsters within, they're blinded by all of this.
32:04
Speaker 1: They're blinded by all of the damage that they've they're seeing,
32:08
Speaker 1: and this revenge is needed without seeing how far into it,
32:12
Speaker 1: because yeah, part of the ending for Sarah seeing you know,
32:16
Speaker 1: the ghost of you know, is that guilt even though
32:19
Speaker 1: just like he felt good about at the moment, is
32:21
Speaker 1: that guilt and being blinded by the hate or the
32:24
Speaker 1: hurt again, it's kind of the same thing, and so
32:27
Speaker 1: it eats away at you. Well again, yeah, it's a
32:30
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of running and trying to feel
32:33
Speaker 1: better and by doing so, making things worse. Yes, And
32:37
Speaker 1: sometimes when you dig too deep, you're coming in with
32:44
Speaker 1: these double meanings. You know, I'm saying, I love it.
32:48
Speaker 1: I love it. So the Crawlers are like us, And
32:51
Speaker 1: that was a deliberate choice that the creators made. If
32:54
Speaker 1: we had never seen, like we'd never evolved, and as
32:57
Speaker 1: the women descend into the womb Wit cave, as they
33:00
Speaker 1: lose their their rope there on biblical cord, they descended
33:03
Speaker 1: to more raw, dark emotions and choices like pure violent
33:08
Speaker 1: anger fueled by grief. And yeah, just looking at this
33:12
Speaker 1: as like grief is the real nightmare, and I, yeah,
33:14
Speaker 1: I forgot about this when Sarah unhooks her monitoring equipment
33:17
Speaker 1: in the beginning and she's flatlining like a piece of
33:20
Speaker 1: her diet and she kind of has this really terrifying nightmare.
33:25
Speaker 1: When Sarah gets stuck in the cave and can't breathe
33:27
Speaker 1: can't move without a friend supporting her. Her friend Beth,
33:30
Speaker 1: who goes back in for her, says, the worst thing
33:33
Speaker 1: that could have happened to you already happened. The cave
33:36
Speaker 1: in behind her blocks her off from her old life,
33:38
Speaker 1: forcing her to move forward again. This is all like
33:41
Speaker 1: me really getting into this idea that it's about grief.
33:44
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is ever intentional, but I
33:46
Speaker 1: think it makes sense. I am curious when this came
33:49
Speaker 1: out because I, like I said, I was late to
33:50
Speaker 1: the game, so I kind of always knew the general
33:53
Speaker 1: gist of it. I'm curious when this came out if
33:56
Speaker 1: you were supposed to think it was all on Sarah's head,
33:58
Speaker 1: because there's the shot of the pills at the one part,
34:01
Speaker 1: there's the nightmares. There's a couple of instances where she
34:03
Speaker 1: sees the crawlers and no one else does, which could
34:07
Speaker 1: plan to that thing We've talked about a lot with
34:08
Speaker 1: horror movies as well. Why didn't you believe her? Not
34:11
Speaker 1: believing women. I'm just curious if any listeners remember seeing
34:15
Speaker 1: this before everyone kind of knew what it was all about,
34:19
Speaker 1: if that was something that you like, maybe this is
34:22
Speaker 1: all in her head, right, I don't know. So when
34:25
Speaker 1: I initially heard about this movie, I knew it was
34:28
Speaker 1: about caving, and I didn't even know it had monsters.
34:30
Speaker 1: I was actually I had no clue. I had nothing.
34:33
Speaker 1: I had no clue. So I watched it and I
34:36
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, okay, okay, co co co cocoa co
34:38
Speaker 1: cool humanois who got stuck down there that survived by
34:42
Speaker 1: eating and by the way, they were all family. Did
34:44
Speaker 1: you notice that? So when Sarah fights the person in
34:47
Speaker 1: the pool of blood, is is the mother who after
34:50
Speaker 1: seeing her her child killed, which is a whole different thing.
34:53
Speaker 1: I was like, they made it, people, they made it.
34:55
Speaker 1: And then that one figurehead apparently called Scar did you
34:59
Speaker 1: see this regrets? Okay, he was the head of the family. Um,
35:04
Speaker 1: their life was destroyed too, like the truly are they
35:06
Speaker 1: truly monsters or are they just surviving and a living
35:09
Speaker 1: and you came into their domain and now your food.
35:16
Speaker 1: But like you saw the two mothers head to head too,
35:20
Speaker 1: and I thought that was purposeful and pointed as well
35:23
Speaker 1: the rage and the hurt and the anger that happened
35:26
Speaker 1: between the two females. I guess, because I guess the
35:30
Speaker 1: creature as a woman, I don't. I don't know. But
35:33
Speaker 1: when I initially watched it, of course I'm not looking
35:35
Speaker 1: at the view of women, this representation of women, but
35:39
Speaker 1: I did note that, yes, this is all about somehow
35:43
Speaker 1: justifying guilt, assaging the guilt and or the pain, so
35:47
Speaker 1: trying to move on and pretend that you're okay. So
35:50
Speaker 1: for me, I saw that Now when I saw the
35:53
Speaker 1: Sarah stuff, to me, I felt like you're supposed to
35:55
Speaker 1: just be her, like you're supposed to feel what she's
35:58
Speaker 1: going through and the nightmare that she's going through. That
36:01
Speaker 1: that's the setup because you need some one person to
36:03
Speaker 1: uh go beyond that empathy level, yeah, be like the audience, yeah,
36:08
Speaker 1: and to see that perspective. So that's how I saw it.
36:11
Speaker 1: Not necessarily she wasn't, but I could see it being
36:13
Speaker 1: like a whole Shamalan. Well, I bet they were at
36:19
Speaker 1: least playing on that. But yeah, we would love to
36:22
Speaker 1: hear from listeners. Clearly, we've had some deep thoughts about
36:26
Speaker 1: the Deep Caving movie that I will not go up to. Yes, no, thanks.
36:32
Speaker 1: You can send your thoughts and suggestions for our next
36:35
Speaker 1: movie to our email, which is definitely your mom Stuff
36:37
Speaker 1: at I hurt me dot com. You can find us
36:39
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You, are on
36:41
Speaker 1: Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks as always to our
36:43
Speaker 1: super producer Christina. Thank you Christina, and thanks to you
36:46
Speaker 1: for listening Stuff I Never Told you. The protection of
36:48
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio for more podcast on my Heart Radio because
36:51
Speaker 1: the art radio app, Apple Podcast or reveryl listen to
36:53
Speaker 1: your favorite shows