25 things you didn’t know about your favorite horror movies

The Descent – Actors kept apart to heighten their reactions

Exploring caves seems like a dangerous enough hobby by itself. But when you bring terrifying cave creatures into the mix, it’s downright deadly.

Six female friends reunite after a tragic accident to head out on a cave expedition. While they are ready for an adventure, it quickly goes horribly wrong once they get in the cave. A collapse leaves them trapped deep underground, and if that isn’t bad enough, they find out that blood-thirsty creatures inhabit this cave, and they know the girls are there.

The creatures aren’t even the only worry. Claustrophobia and insanity start to set in, and the women turn on each other. With limited supplies, the girls have to find a way out before the predators find them and kill them all.

That synopsis is enough to keep us out of a cave forever.

In The Descent, the creatures were played by real actors, not stuntmen or CGI characters, in order to get real emotion out of them. To really play up the fear of cast, the appearance of the cave creatures was kept a secret until the first scene they all shot together. When the actresses finally encountered them for the first time, they were apparently genuinely scared and ran off the set screaming (and laughing, of course).

Not only were they kept apart before filming, but during filming, the cave creatures and cave explorers were kept separate for most of the production, including during lunch breaks. The filmmakers wanted to make sure that they could properly portray the animosity between the two groups, and keeping them from forming a real relationship off-camera was their way of ensuring that.