the road, breaking down in tears. After a truck passes her, she vomits out the window. When she sits up, she sees a hallucination of a bloodied Juno sitting next to her and screams. Extended ending In the original release in the United Kingdom, an extended ending is presented, which was cut for the US release over concerns that it was too depressing. After hallucinating the image of Juno, Sarah awakens in the cave, her entire escape having been revealed to be part of the same hallucination. She sits up to see Jessica sitting across from her, holding a birthday cake. As Sarah smiles the shot widens to reveal that the cake's birthday-candlelight is actually the light of her torch. The camera slowly backs out, revealing the darkness surrounding Sarah as the crawlers are heard closing in. Cast Shauna Macdonald as Sarah Carter Natalie Mendoza as Juno Kaplan MyAnna Buring as Samantha "Sam" Vernet Saskia Mulder as Rebecca Vernet Alex Reid as Elizabeth "Beth" O'Brien Nora-Jane Noone as Holly Mills Oliver Milburn as Paul Carter Molly Kayll as Jessica Carter Production When Neil Marshall's film Dog Soldiers (2002) was a moderate success, the director received numerous requests to direct other horror films. The director was initially wary of being typecast as a horror film director, although he eventually agreed to make The Descent, emphasizing, "They are very different films." Casting Filmmakers originally planned for the cast to be both male and female, but Neil Marshall's business partner realized that horror films rarely have all-female casts. Defying convention, Marshall cast all women, and to avoid making them clichéd, he solicited basic advice from his female friends. He explained the difference, "The women discuss how they feel about the situation, which the soldiers in Dog Soldiers would never have done." He also gave the characters different accents to enable the audience to tell them apart and to establish a more "cosmopolitan feel" than the British marketing of Dog Soldiers. The cast included Shauna Macdonald as Sarah, Natalie Mendoza as Juno, Alex Reid as Beth, Saskia Mulder as Rebecca, MyAnna Buring as Sam, Nora-Jane Noone as Holly, Oliver Milburn as Paul, and Molly Kayll as Jessica. Craig Conway portrayed one of the film's crawlers, Scar. Filming While The Descent is set in North America, the film was shot entirely in the United Kingdom. Exterior scenes were filmed in Scotland, and interior scenes were