"The story of an all-female caving expedition that goes seriously wrong, The Descent (2005) is arguably the best of the mid-2000s horror entries that returned to the genre a verve and intensity it hadn't seen since its 1970s heyday ... [it] was popular both commercially and critically, providing a genuine version of what others could only produce as pastiche ... Emphasizing female characters and camaraderie, The Descent is an ideal springboard for discussing underexplored horror themes: the genre's engagement with the lure of the archaic; the idea of birth as the foundational human trauma and its implications for horror film criticism; and the use of provisional worldviews, or rubber realities, in horror"--Publisher's description.