The Descent (2005) features a group of female adventurers exploring a new cave system which was unmapped for a good reason. The film is surreal and claustrophobic and notable for getting such a high score on the Bechdel Test that the rest of the class didn’t get a curve.
This poster for the film might appear a candidate for Misleading Movie Posters. Is that a group of circus performers falling straight to Hell? Or a woman using the bodies of her comrades to climb out of an active volcano?
But the arrangement of the bodies is actually a nod to a famous portrait of Salvador Dali. (NSFW link: artsy nudes ahead)
Photographer Philippe Halsman posed Dali in front of a carefully arranged motif of naked women forming a skull. The piece was titled “In Voluptas Mors” — or Voluptuous Death. Movie buffs — or Cracked readers — might also recognize the image from the poster for The Silence of the Lambs, where the nude women serve as the skull on the moth.
The artistic allusion on The Descent poster is certainly interesting, but is it applicable to this film? A nod to “Voluptuous Death” is a natural fit for Lambs, which features a serial killer who targets full-figured women for the carving.
The Descent features a cast of athletic women who often meet death. But the deaths are due to the geographic location and its dangers not gender targeting.
Horror Able Women 