‘The eye-gouging was very, very satisfying’: how we made cave horror classic The Descent

‘The child crawler whose head I crush with my boot was only 11, bless him.

It was actually me stamping on a cauliflower’ I was introduced to Christian Colson at Celador Films off the back of [2002 horror film] Dog Soldiers, and I pitched them a project – actually a feature-length version of my student graduation film – about zombies on an oil rig.

They liked it but said it was too expensive, so on the train back to Newcastle I was asking myself what would make a really scary horror film that could be contained and so made on a budget.

I was thinking of things set in the dark and was like, well … caves .

At the back of my mind was a school trip to a lead mine where the guide had said, “OK, everybody, turn your lights off” and, for the first time, I experienced a darkness that I just couldn’t fathom.

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