The hysterical female trope has been present in cinema since its inception, characterising cisgender women and those who identify as women as less rational or emotionally stable than their cisgender male counterparts. Often, we see female characters prone to mood swings, reactions deemed irrational, and involved in situations where they’re positioned as the ‘damsel in distress’ that must be saved by the cool, calm, and collected male hero. This treatment has not been exclusive to cinema, with ‘female hysteria’ once being considered a medical diagnosis for women that had ‘a tendency to cause trouble for others,’ ranging from those suffering from depression and anxiety to nervousness, insomnia, irritability, and sexual desire. The trope infantilises these characters, reducing them to beings who need to be protected and guided by men, stripping them of their agency. These characters are deemed ‘too emotional’—or ‘too hysterical’—to be trusted or believed when the stakes are high. Though this is often perpetuated in horror, films of the genre often address patriarchal fears of a female hero in control of their own narrative. Thus, we often see the hysterical female trope subverted, giving the viewer nuanced, powerful representations of those socialised as women.

One such example is The Descent, released in 2005 by Neil Marshall, fresh off the success of his cult werewolf flick Dog Soldiers. The Descent tells the story of Sarah, who is rocked by trauma in her personal life—her husband Paul and daughter Jessica are killed in a car crash after she goes white water rafting with her friends Beth and Juno. A year after the tragedy, Sarah, Beth, and Juno are accompanied by their friends Rebecca, Sam, and Holly on a caving expedition in North Carolina. Rather than exploring the local, marked caves, Juno takes them through an unexplored chasm where they become trapped. While trying to find their way back to civilisation, the group encounter a vicious subterranean species that begins picking them off one by one. Under intense circumstances and a fight for survival, rather than being represented as hysterical characters incapable of making rational decisions, the protagonists of The Descent subvert the hysterical female trope with their quick thinking, smart decisions, and ability to stay calm and collected under pressure, giving them a fighting chance of getting out of the cave system alive.

We are first introduced to Sarah, June, and Beth as they go white water rafting, a sport often associated with men. Zippia reports that in the US, only 27.1 percent of people who take part in white water rafting identify as women. Rather than being phased by the dangers of the sport, the women are exhilarated and handle the water’s conditions with ease and expertise, immediately setting them up in the film’s narrative as strong, capable protagonists. Sarah’s husband Paul and daughter Jessica accompany the group, with Paul taking on the traditional maternal role of taking care of their child while Sarah enjoys her activity with friends. He is further positioned as the emotional partner in their relationship as they drive away, when he is lost in his thoughts and Sarah asks what is wrong. Despite sitting in the car together, they are isolated in close-up shots that suggest a hostility between the characters, united by their daughter Jessica, who is centred in each frame. They defy the representation of the classic ‘happy family,’ as well as traditional assigned gender roles in which the mother is the prominent caregiver and homemaker and the father is the worker.

Sarah’s world is torn apart when the family is involved in a car crash, and Paul and Jessica are killed. It is the first time we see her hysterically upset, rather than hysterically happy as she was earlier, with Sarah collapsing onto the hospital floor to weep when Beth informs her of Jessica’s death. This outpouring of grief is not presented as a weakness in her character, but rather exemplifies her strength as she meets up with Beth and Juno a year later alongside Rebecca, Sam, and Holly. Sarah’s friends are seen as supportive of her grief process and do not push Sarah to move on, but rather stand by her and her needs as she navigates the loss at her own pace. Sarah’s grieving process is presented as nuanced: she is not seen falling apart at all times on screen. Instead, she is seen laughing and joking with her friends, while also suffering from persistent dreams about Jessica. Sarah’s grief process is something many viewers could feel uncomfortable with: it isn’t linear or pretty, and she is often pictured in close-up, canted angles to maintain a somewhat claustrophobic closeness to the character. However, her friends’ jovial attitudes, physical closeness to Sarah within scenes, and their acceptance of the journey she is on without negative comment invites viewers into their inner circle and, by extension, their way of approaching Sarah’s trauma.

The group of women have met not just to support Sarah in her time of need, showing a great deal of emotional maturity and strength, but to chase the thrill of caving. As they make their way into the caving system, their prioritisation of knowledge and capability is made clear when, instead of rushing ahead into adventure, they repeatedly emphasise the importance of using equipment correctly and following Juno’s lead, as it was she who planned the trip. 

Sarah’s emotions begin to overpower her sense of reason as she enters the cave, screaming as bats fly towards her and experiencing a panic attack while crawling through an exposed space. She is pictured in a long-shot which allows the towering cave walls to engulf her, personifying the darkness of her loss looming over her. Beth uses reason to calm her through the experience, as well as a corny joke that makes her laugh and soothes her, ultimately saving her life as rocks fall in the passage shortly after the duo gets out unscathed. Tensions mount between the women as they realise they’re trapped—and escalate as Juno admits she did not take them to the caves they originally planned to explore, taking them instead to an unknown cave system which makes rescue impossible. Despite this confrontation being far more fiery than that which Sarah experienced with Paul, the women are not isolated in shots—instead, they are still positioned closely within the frame, suggesting that despite their disagreement they are still a united front in the face of danger. Though the women do shout and become visibly fearful of their dire situation, they quickly regain composure and continue travelling through the cave system, guided by Juno using a lighter to detect which way a breeze is entering the caves to guide them toward an exit. Despite Juno’s betrayal, the women work together to thread rope across a chasm to transport them all to the other side, and when a carabiner clip snaps and leaves Juno hanging and Rebecca with a rope-burned hand, the remaining group attends to them both to ensure their safety. 

Emotion trumping reason as their descent continues leads to the deaths of group members and acts as a stark reminder of the importance of each other’s survival skills. When Holly believes she sees daylight, she rushes ahead in the caves before falling into a hole, breaking her leg. This ultimately leads to her death when the group first comes into contact with Crawlers, the bat-like humanoid creatures that live within the caves that are perfectly adapted to the dark surroundings and limited sustenance that comes their way. Witnessing Holly’s death, Juno is able to fight off and kill one of the beasts before it can kill her—though the trauma of the attack leads to her accidentally striking Beth in the throat with a pickaxe. Later in the film, as she loses hope and direction, Sam attempts to retrace her steps over the cave chasm before considering the vulnerable position it would put her in and is killed in the process. After the group discovers that the Crawlers cannot see and instead hunt using sound, Rebecca’s loud shouts to Sam attract the attention of a Crawler that drags her away and kills her. Sam and Juno survive by prioritising the skills they have acquired over the years, keeping a level head while facing off against the creatures. This is not to say they abandon their emotions, however. Both women are seen grappling with an array of feelings—hope, sadness, panic, fear—and they are presented as emotionally healthy heroes who embrace these feelings but also don’t let them overrule their logical minds as they explore the caves. While The Descent does subvert some common stereotypes of the hysterical female in its treatment of emotional processing, the filmmaker’s choice to kill these characters when they do not respond to their situation ‘reasonably’ still upholds other elements of the trope: when the women act ‘irrationally,’ letting their emotions get the better of them, they are punished for it. 

As Sam and Rebecca become trapped by a Crawler, before their demise, Juno sneaks up behind the monster and attacks it. Sam uses her medical background to collate the group’s knowledge about the Crawlers and the best plan of action to fight against them. When Sarah discovers Holly’s body after the group becomes separated in the caves, she mourns for her friend while also stripping her of her supplies so that she can use them. Sarah, however, is overcome with emotion when she finds Beth, still alive, who admits that the locket she ripped from Juno’s neck after she was struck was a present from Sarah’s husband, Paul, revealing to Sarah the affair that Paul and Juno were having before his untimely death. Beth’s decision to divulge this secret in her dying moments could be seen as a cathartic moment—perhaps she didn’t want to go to the grave harbouring a secret for her friend. Beth’s final act could also be interpreted as an example of a common repercussion of the hysteria trope playing out: Beth let her emotions overpower her logical survival instincts, so she is immediately killed off. 

Rather than being crushed by the news, Sarah continues through the caves—anger seeming to fuel her on her mission as she bludgeons a Crawler to death shortly after. As Sarah and Juno reunite in the caves, Sarah does not immediately explode with emotion as one might expect, but instead calmly asks Juno what happened to Beth and whether she saw her die. Both Sarah and the audience know that Juno’s response is a lie, but Sarah merely nods and the two continue towards an exit blocked by Crawlers. In Sarah’s decision not to confront Juno here, we can see her ability to put aside her desires and emotions to benefit her own survival: she needs Juno to aid her in fighting off the Crawlers that stand between her and her freedom. As they savagely cut through the monsters, Sarah shows Juno the locket before quickly and brutally stabbing her in the leg with a pick axe, sacrificing her to the Crawlers heading towards them. It’s a bloody and satisfying revenge arc for Sarah, which she achieves without damning herself to death, prioritising her own escape.

Even when out of the cave system, Sarah keeps her wits about her, putting distance between herself and the Crawlers by driving away in the group’s abandoned vehicle. Only when she has driven for a long while does she allow herself to stop and cry through the trauma she has witnessed. The film ends with Sarah being transported back to the caves, the vision of her escape seemingly a dream she had after she hit her head during a fight with the Crawlers. The end of The Descent suggests that no matter whether the women act from a place of emotion or logic, they are doomed to remain in the caves at the hands of the Crawlers and cannot escape. However, in The Descent II which followed in 2009, we learn that both Sarah and Juno survived their ordeal as Sarah goes back into the caves with a team of specialists to search for Juno. This subverts the ending of the original film, and gives us two strong female heroines that are capable of adapting to their surroundings and surviving against the odds. Though both women die at the end of The Descent II, they do so fighting to save the group who went to rescue Juno who are less knowledgeable about the threat.

The Descent features different representations of hysteria—from the women hysterically laughing with each other to Sarah breaking down in hysterics over the death of Paul and Jessica. It does not, however, reduce its female protagonists to helpless damsels in distress. Instead, Marshall’s triumphant film highlights the strength of women banding together in a dire situation, combining their individual knowledge to try to ensure the safety of the group as a whole. The Descent shows how abandoning reason can lead to a quick death, focusing on the logical decision making of the women that gives them a fighting chance of surviving the dangerous cave conditions and the Crawlers that lurk within. Sarah, as a focal point in the film, is a female character rocked by tragedy, but she is not reduced to a husk by it. Instead, she still takes part in her passions with her friends who support and love her through the complicated time. She is seen suffering in the aftermath with anxious episodes and visions, but these episodes do not negate the fact that she is a strong and capable woman who will not let adversity stop her from moving forward and surviving. Ultimately, The Descent subverts the common horror trope of the hysterical female by giving us a deep, nuanced exploration of female friendship, love, and survival against all odds.