The Descent (film)/YMMV

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Some see Sarah as a sympathetic and crazy Woobie, while others see her as a evil psychopath who committed an unredeemable act. Some see Juno as a flawed but ultimately heroic badass, while others see her as the selfish bitch who got all her friends killed by taking them to the wrong cave and practically murdered Beth.
  • Question: What would you do if your home was invaded by a bunch of weird-looking giantesses with insanely advanced technology who were impossible to communicate with?
• Better on DVD: Played straight and subverted at the same time. On one hand, there is a lot of detail and scenes that you can't really enjoy as much unless it's on a huge high def cinema screen, but on the other hand, there's a lot of subtle things in the scenery and with character interactions that you don't notice the first few times you see it.
• Broken Base: See the entry on Alternate Character Interpretation.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Just take your pick.
• Hell Is That Noise: The Crawlers' screeches, and the disembodied child's laughter that Sarah keeps imagining.
• High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Oh my god. Does caving sound like a fun activity to you? You probably shouldn't see this movie then.
  • To play on this, an Austin area theater company held a special showing of the movie. In a cave.
  • The crawlers, especially their first appearance.
• Moral Event Horizon: For some, Sarah crosses this when she impales Juno's leg with a pick and leaves her for dead, after learning that the latter not only left Beth for dead and lied about it, but she was also having an affair with her late husband. (Although, to be fair, Sarah had become rather batshit by that point.)
  • For some others, Juno crossed this when she left Beth for dead and lied about it. It's kind of a touchy, but much-brought up subject amongst fans.
    • One could also argue that Juno did this much earlier by tricking her friends into the wrong cave, including a novice, or that her affair with Sarah's husband qualifies.
• Squick: Falling into a pool of blood.
  • The sequel managed to top it: Falling into a pool of blood and crawler shit.
• Tear Jerker: The death of Beth is especially heartbreaking.
• Too Cool to Live: Holly, the bad ass tough girl who loves thrills, is the first main character to die. Her broken leg sort of made her an easy target.
  • And even more so after that, Juno and Sarah.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The movie makes the standard Developing Doomed Characters segment more exciting by having the characters spend it trapped in a cave. A dark cave, filled with narrow passageways barely large enough to crawl through and gaping chasms that they have to cross by clinging to the ceiling. This is enough material to sustain a horror movie all on its own; having the cave *also* contain monsters on top of that was overkill.
• Uncanny Valley: The crawlers were originally going to look more animalistic, but when they did the prosthetics tests, they decided it was scarier to have them closer to human.
• The Woobie: Everyone gets their moments, although the most prominent example would be Sarah, pre-Ax Crazy.