20 best badass women of horror movies

18. Sarah Carter (The Descent)

The Descent is one of those rare horror movies that doesn’t just respect women but features them as leads. In fact, The Descent can boast an almost entirely female cast. And they’re not all flailing around while being victimized, either. Nearly every character featured in this movie is both physically and constitutionally strong (though sometimes very flawed).

Still, we’ve got to pick one character to feature. Sarah Carter (Shauna Macdonald) is the likeliest one. She’s got a tragic backstory, given that her husband and daughter were in a deadly auto accident. Sarah, who was also in the car, survived but is grappling with the trauma of their deaths.

One year after the crash, Sarah joins her friends — Juno, Beth, Sam, Rebecca and Holly — for a caving adventure in the mountains of North Carolina. Sarah’s grief is still palpable and her friends are awkward, though caring.

Things take a left turn, however, when the cave passage the group is exploring collapses. Juno admits that she led them into an unexplored section of the massive cave, making their rescue all the more unlikely. Then, everything gets even worse when the group learns that this particular cave is inhabited by vicious humanoids (called “crawlers” in the credits).

Sarah quickly realizes that she must fight to survive. She makes her way through the claustrophobic environment of the cave with her friends, who are killed one by one. Sure, Sarah has a psychotic breakdown after defeating a group of crawlers in a bloody, intense sequence. She also realizes that Juno had carried on with Sarah’s husband before his death.

Still, for all of the betrayal and the bloodthirsty cave monsters, Sarah makes it through. Well, depending on the cut you watch. In the North American release, she makes it out of the cave and into the world above. In the original edit, however, this is revealed to be a hallucination, with Sarah stuck in a dead end.