If your ‘friend’ led you into an uncharted
cave inhabited by man-eating half-humans, what would you do?
In this How to Beat video, we’ll follow the amateur cavers,
see if we can make better decisions, and ultimately attempt to beat the
Crawlers in, The Descent.
Think you can do better, let us know in the
comments! Enjoy these How to Beat videos, like and subscribe! Have a movie you’d like
me to cover, reply to this comment!
Let’s get to it.
We start out following three sassy adventurous ladies white water
rafting. After they break through the rapids, Paul shares a moment with Juno before driving home
with his wife and daughter. He starts daydreaming about slowly taking off Juno’s wetsuit while
behind the wheel, and veers out of his lane.
That was some final destination shit. Paul may
have cheated death prior to this, but honestly, it was straight up his fault for daydreaming
about checking out his wife’s friend. He should have saved those thoughts for later when his
wife and kids weren’t in the car with him.
Still, who the hell thought strapping an open
PVC pipe to their roof and loading it with a bunch of copper rods was a good idea.
They’re definitely getting charged with manslaughter for catapulting half a dozen metal
javelins through Paul and Jessica’s faces.
Sarah wakes up in a hospital bed clueless as to
what happened. She rips off all the wires, tubes, and gadgets she’s hooked up to so she can wander
the hospital to find someone who can bring her up to speed. I think they have little buttons on
the beds that alert the staff. You could just push that and not rip out all the important
stuff that’s probably keeping you alive.
Oh it was a PTSD nightmare. Yah, I
guess it makes sense that you’d be fairly distraught and impulsive.
Junos gotta be feeling a little guilty about sending Sarah’s husband
bedroom eyes pre-crash.
One year after the ‘incident’, Sarah, Juno,
and Beth get back together to go spelunking in the Appalachian mountains. They’re joined
by two inexperienced sisters, Sam and Rebecca, as well as Juno’s half-reckless, adrenaline
junky base jumper friend, Holly.
Holly laments that the cave they are to explore is
just a tourist trap and offers no real challenges and probably has a gift shop in it. I haven’t
read the brochure for the cave-diving adventure you’re embarking on, but I have read the
synopsis of this movie, and I gotta say, I’m not sure we’re talking
about the same cave.
Sarah seems resentful of Juno for ditching
her the day after the crash, as she should be, and is obviously still traumatized by
the horrific loss of her family. I mean, she’s keeping antidepressants bedside
to cope with her night terrors.
All this to say, taking Sarah spelunking with
two noobs being led by the person she resents who will be encouraged to push their
limits by her adrenaline-addict friend, doesn’t seem like the greatest idea.
Maybe it would be okay if the cave was a tourist trap with a gift shop inside, but
I'm going to guess that it’s unmarked or was sealed up by the locals for a grave
reason that they will ignore.
Holly mentions that it’s a level two cave
in the fictional Boreham Caverns. I’m not sure level 2 is even a thing. What cave
they think they are headed into doesn’t matter because Juno left the guide book in
the glove box for some stupid reason.
Worth mentioning that everyone in the group
should have had a copy of the guide book or map of the cavern they are entering in case
they get separated or lost, or yah know, so they can actually find their way around.
On their 2 mile long hike to the entrance of the tourist trap, they run into the throat cut
carcass of a bull elk. Nature, or bad omen?
They reach the entrance and everyone
rappels in. Sarah notices what looks like a bloodstained handprint on the
wall and neglects to tell anyone about it because it’s probably nothing. Just like the
elk was probably just attacked by a bear.
Sarah looked like she was about to get impaled by
a copper rod. I still don’t think bringing a PTSD stricken person cave diving was a good idea.
Sam asks which way they need to go next. Juno replies that there’s only one way out of this
chamber. Down the pipe. Before hard hostering her.. ice climbing axe? Why does she have an ice
climbing axe? Why is everyone following someone who brought an ice climbing axe into a cave that
has no ice? If ice climbing axes were required tools for this expedition, why is Juno the only
person with one? Not looking good here.
You know what would have been a good idea,
bringing ascenders instead of a fucking ice climbing axe so you can climb out the way you
came in incase the tunnel is blocked, flooded, your equipment fails, or you run into homicidal
cave gollums. The cave very well could be flooded, with all the water pouring into it.
I’m also gonna take a hot guess that they didn’t inform the park rangers, let
alone anyone of their plans.
Once inside the cave, they light some flares and
hangout for a few. Sarah hears the giggling of her deceased child and wanders off by herself to see
if Jessica got a head start on them. Can’t wait to see how she does in the claustrophobic confines
of the next tunnel they have to go through.
Not well. Sarah gets stuck, both mentally and
physically. Beth goes back and pretty much does everything right, tells her to breathe slowly,
cracks some jokes, and tries to lead her out. The problem is that this cave is experiencing
tectonic shifts for some reason.
Good thing nobody was on the other
side, or wait, that would be bad, because they didn’t bring any ascenders or
let the park rangers know their whereabouts. According to Juno the only way out is down the
pipe, so going back wasn’t an option anyways.
According to the guidebook nobody brought,
which from your memory contradicts what Juno said about there being only one way out. You
didn’t say anything at the time, and now you’re here. Turns out, Juno was bullshitting them
and led them down a different unmarked cave so that everyone would be dependent on her and
she could play the fearless leader role.
Needless to say, it backfired hard.
Leading a group of noobs into an unmarked, unmapped cave that nobody knows you are at, is
unbelievably reckless. The fatal accident in the Nutty Putty Cave serves as a stark warning of
this. Even in well mapped caves, with experienced cavers who had expert backup, a man still lost
his way and got irretrievably stuck.
The fact that this is an unmapped cave means
that there might not be a way out at all. Which means Juno is even more of an idiot,
if that was possible, for not bringing ascenders to climb out the way they came.
And Juno was concerned about Holly being reckless. Speaking of, if Holly had experienced Boreham
Caverns previously, she must have known Juno was leading them elsewhere and didn’t say anything.
Both of you are untrustworthy bitches.
Still, it’s not all on Juno and Holly. In
caving, the consequences for entering the wrong cave are exceedingly high. Everyone
should have been checking their guidebooks and making sure they were in the right
area and going to the right cave.
Juno is right about one thing,
if they stay, they die.
While everyone’s fighting, Sarah is
scouting around with her headlamp.
Strange, but she doesn’t say anything.
I could see her passing that off as more PTSD hallucinations or the darkness playing
tricks on her eyes. The clicking sounds could be passed off as more bats or something.
The journey deeper into the cave in search of an exit is halted by a gigantic underground
precipice. Judging by the time it took for that rock to hit the ground, a fall would
be fatal. Juno pops some flares and spots a tunnel across the cavern. Could be a dead end,
but they don’t really have any other options.
Rebecca volunteers to trad climb the
overhang and rig up a line using cams. Nice of you to volunteer, and maybe
you are the only trad pro here, but shouldn’t the self-proclaimed badasses
Juno or Holly be the default choice for this high-risk operation, considering
they got you all into this mess.
I’m not a trad climber, but I do rock
climb and have some general experience. Firstly, I wouldn’t clip a giant power drill on
my harness when I'm traversing an overhang. The trad gear is heavy enough, and dead hanging
from a ceiling is hard enough. Secondly, some of those cam placements in flared wedges
look a bit sketchy, and she’s not giving them a tug-check before placing her weight on them.
I get she’s limited on options though.
When she goes for her third cam placement,
she finds an old bolt which had to have been placed by a human explorer. Might as well
use it, even though you’ll probably just be following them to the dead end where they died.
If whoever explored this cavern had made it out, it would have been in the brochure.
I’m sorry, I'm not being optimistic. I’m sure that explorer found a
groundbreak just around the bend.
I’d still place my own cam somewhere around it.
Why solely trust your life to an old bolt some other dumbass who came down here placed. That
was the first bolt she found on the overhang, meaning the other bolts they placed must have
been shallow and zippered out on a fall.
Rebecca makes it across and rigs up
a line that they can shuttle across. Juno is the last to cross. Instead
of shuttling over like everyone else, she decides to clean the route in
case they need the gear again.
Cleaning the route is a bit risky. Rebecca’s
cams were hastily placed and not to be relied upon. I think Juno should have shuttled
across, and if they needed the gear again, they could just go back and clean it.
This play does put you on the wrong side of another tunnel collapse though.
Juno’s struggling hard, looks like we’re going to be finding out if those cam
placements were solid or not.
What the hell was Rebecca doing? There is no
reason the rope should have slipped her hand like that. I don’t think her figure 8 belay
device was set up properly, it doesn't look like the rope was looped around its neck. That
and her hand wasn’t in the brake position, which it should have been. Her belay gloves also suck
because that little amount of rope slip caused enough friction burn to cut straight through
her hand forcing her to dump the rope.
I want to say Juno was lucky she
wasn’t also relying on Rebecca’s cams, but I don’t think that bolt is any better.
Hey, at least you got your gear back.
Further into the cavern they find a mural. How did the homo-sapien artist get up there to paint it,
that’s like 20 feet up on a smooth wall.
Beth remarks that it’s a map.
There’s the mountain they’re under, with the cave they are in and two exits.
I think that’s a bit of a stretch. Even if it’s a map and there is an exit, there’s
no directions as to where the exit is.
Nobody notices Smeagol trailing them, so they
blindly march onwards only to end up at a fork in the cave. Juno, using her lighter as a barometer,
catches an air current in one of the passages, which means it likely leads to the surface.
At least she’s a clever idiot.
Holly, mistakes phosphorescent rock
for daylight, takes the idiot baton from Juno and sprints down the corridor and
falls into the mouth of another cave.
You dumb bitch. Escaping these tunnels would have
been hard enough in full health. Now they have to haul you and your broken leg around too.
At least they brought someone along with medical training. Well, she’s
a med student, so barely.
Sam has everyone hoist Holly out of the water and
v. Getting her out of the water mostly helps them check for blood loss. Aligning the bone most
likely wasn’t necessary. Her leg could have been immobilized in its current position and
manipulating her leg just caused more pain, writhing, and damage. It does provide
a strong dramatic effect though.
Meanwhile, Sarah is tripping balls playing hide
and seek with her dead daughter. She finds an old rusty miner’s helmet which must have
belonged to whoever put that bolt in.
Looks like he’s not doing so well. Of
course nobody believes her. Why would they? It sounds psychotic and Sarah’s
been known to have hallucinations.
Sarah has the total opposite reaction that I would
expect. She wants to see if that man-thing she saw could help them find a way out. I don’t even
know what to say to that. If I was in this group, and someone told me that, sure I wouldn’t
believe them, but I’m going to place myself in the middle of the pack just in case.
The crew continues to follow the air current, which leads to a room filled with the
bones of dead animals, and probably some humans. I’d say this is ample supporting
evidence for Sarah’s monster-sighting. Best start fashioning weapons out of the
bones and anything else you can find.
Juno can’t find a breeze and doesn’t
know which way they need to go, so Sam and the others start yelling for
help like imbeciles. Yah, good idea, let’s attract the thing that’s slaughtered
hundreds of animals that were bigger, stronger, faster, and let’s be
honest, smarter than you.
Finding the way out is your last priority
right now. The exit could be a mile from here or nonexistent. The last thing you want to do
is line up in a single file in a confined space with these things attacking you. It would
be better to all band up in the middle of the room with weapons in hand. You probably
don’t want to get up next to the wall with them climbing around like spider-monkeys.
Wow, literally nobody stayed together. Now they’re all easy targets to get picked off one by one.
Juno puts up a hell of a fight against 2 of the gollums, and shanks one of them dead with her ice
axe. Who knew that thing would come in handy.
Beth runs back to help Juno, but
Juno’s in full rage mode.
Probably shouldn’t have snuck up behind
someone who just fought to the death. So many movies do the whole, friendlies almost
kill each other, thing, but back down before a fatal blow it dealt. I’m glad this movie
took it there, because realistically, friendly fire happens a lot more
than we’d like to admit.
Rebecca’s headlamp ran out of battery. Apparently
she decided that instead of packing spare batteries, she’d just bring a giant glow stick
that’s totally useless at lighting up the cave. So useless, that she unwittingly walked
right under another crawler.
Now that there’s a lull in the violence and the
crawlers are distracted eating your friend..
..it’s a good time to assess their strengths
and weaknesses. Strengths: Fast, good climbers, sharp teeth, sneaky. Weaknesses: They don’t
see so good, or Sarah would be dead.
Basically, shut the fuck up, pick up
something you can use as a weapon, and no, the glow stick doesn’t count, try to
find your friends, try not to get separated from your friends, then try to quietly find a way
out. The boneyard is proof that there is.
If you’re feeling frisky, and a couple of you
are together and have fashioned a shiv out of animal bones, you can bait the creatures in front
of you by tossing stones, then spear them through the neck or chest. Sounds dangerous, but it’s
better to be the hunter than the hunted.
Or you could spoon each other in a corner
while crying in hopes that your ‘friends’ make a noise which distracts the monsters long
enough for you to attempt an escape.
Oh now everyone pulls out
their ice axes and knives, where were those when you first got attacked?
Sarah also uses her friend's unintentional
diversion to spark up a fire torch out of an old oil can on the ground. Clever, but
I'm not going to award her any points for this. Having to be resourceful because of your
piss poor planning means you’re still an idiot. Any caver worth their salt would tell you to bring
a couple spare sets of batteries at least.
Rebecca and Sam are trying to link
up with the rest of their group. Difficult when you can’t make any sound.
Fuck yah. Honestly, these things aren’t that hard to kill if you can group up on them. I say sitting
on my comfy couch in an air conditioned apartment under zero threat of a gruesome death.
They can hug it out somewhere else. The sounds of their fight and the crawler’s
screeching will attract more of them, and we don’t know how many of them there are.
Juno tells Rebeca and Sam about a way out, marked by the explorer that came before them. That
it should lead them to the cave entrance which the man-eaters use to go outside and hunt animals.
First, they need to find Sarah. Tall task, but it’d be damn hard to live with
yourself if you just left her.
Not sure why Juno holstered her ice axe. I’d
have that baby cocked back ready to strike. Although Juno has been a bit trigger happy with
it, so maybe holstering it was a good idea.
Sarah finds Beth in the carnage. How
the hell is she still alive? She took an ice axe through the neck. Beth tells her
that Juno killed her, and to not trust her. I know Juno pulled a dick move dragging you guys
into this cave, and wasn’t the best friend, but to say that she is a murdering psychopath is crazy.
You jumped up behind her when she was fighting for her life. You got caught in the cross-fire.
It was just a shitty case of friendly fire.
Beth’s lamentations are drawing the attention
of the humanoids. Her dying wish is to have Sarah finish her off with a rock so she doesn’t
have to experience getting eaten alive.
Love each day. Sarah doesn’t even make a step
before another albino flesh eater descends on her. Sarah’s in no mood for it’s shit, and head
stomps it like Ryan Gosling in Driver.
Best get some distance from the commotion now.
You gotta shoot and scoot with these fuckers.
The caveman’s girlfriend shows up for date night
and finds what’s left of his head after Sarah curb stomped him. Needless to say, she’s pissed.
Sarah makes a run for it and trips into the pond full of god knows what. Haven’t we learned
by now that running only makes things worse. Standing and moving so incredibly still that
you become invisible is the best defense. And where is that pocket knife you had.
She is smart to hold her breath, collect herself, and ever so slowly Navy SEAL out of the crawler’s
toilet so she doesn’t make more noise.
Doesn’t help her though, the
albino bat-bitch is onto her.
Pocket knife. Where’s your god
damn pocket knife? If everyone did a little preparation and planning they
wouldn’t have to struggle for a hail mary everytime they found themselves
in a near-death situation.
Sarah climbs up onto the rock and freezes when
she hears another coming around the corner. It steps on her but thinks it’s just another
animal carcass and moves past her.
She carefully grabs another bone club and by the
look in her eye, it’s time for vengeance.
So the tally is 1 for the crawlers, and
like 5 or 6 for the girls. As long as they have light, they have an immense tactical
advantage. These creatures are only human, and have all the same weaknesses.
Sarah lets out a bloodcurdling scream. I don’t think she was doing it to get the
attention of the others, however if she was, outright screaming isn’t the best way. Your
friends may just think you got whacked. Best to yell something like, “I’m Okay, Help Me.”
This way they know you aren’t a goner and it wasn’t a man-eater yelling or something.
Juno and the others hear her scream and try to get to her, but when Juno turns the corner she
finds an entire family of these things.
Juno’s team is in a pretty good spot. The corridor
is narrow enough that only one crawler can attack at once, but tall enough that she can stand
and fight. She could pull a Leonidas and make this passage the proverbial hot gates. The last
place you want to be is surrounded in the open, or forced into a crawl with them behind you.
They opt to run for it but get forced back to the precipice. So instead of pulling a
Leonidas, you guys pulled a persian.
Sam, in a utterly moronic move, tries to
trad climb back across the overhang. There’s just no way to fight in that position, it’s
physically demanding so you’ll be making noise, it achieves literally nothing, and
it goes about how you’d expect.
At least she took one of them with her.
They all keep forgetting that after every noisy altercation they need
to relocate, and another crawler gives Rebecca an involuntary c-section.
Juno’s brain is misfiring from all the action, and ditches Rebecca to leap off the cliff into
the water. She finds no salvation though.
You’re telling me this thing was holding its
breath this whole time after getting shanked and falling. Give me a break.
Sarah jumpscare pulls Juno up from the slippery rocks. She’s lucky her
face didn’t catch an ice axe.
Juno and Sarah go back to back tomb raider style
against the rest of the crawler family.
Damn! Some badass ladies. If there’s more
of them, they are definitely on their way. Unless you plan on fighting some
more, I suggest you get moving.
