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When looking at the horror genre, there are so many names out there who we hold close to our hearts as personal favourites when it comes to tantalisingly terrifying tales, be that in front of or behind the camera. One such name who towers above nearly all others is, of course, the truly legendary WES CRAVEN. An absolute master of his craft, the charismatic and fascinating Craven earned his moniker of the Master of Horror for having a career which boasted features such as A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, SCREAM, THE HILLS HAVE EYES and THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. Craven sadly left us in 2015 after a battle with brain cancer, but his legacy is one that will never be forgotten and his work still astounds today just as much as it ever has. And now, Horror Channel is shining a spotlight on some of this game-changer’s hidden gems as they get set to dish up four of Craven’s hidden marvels throughout January. Here, we give you the lowdown on these films and just why you should be going out of your way to check out some absolute delights from one of the greatest names in the history of the game.

The Serpent and the Rainbow

For many longstanding Wes Craven fans, 1988’s The Serpent and the Rainbow is often lauded as the most overlooked classic of this iconic moviemaker’s career. In fact, many would cite the film as his best in several years, with it generally revered as his best picture since A Nightmare on Elm Street upon its release.

When it comes to the zombie subgenre, the iconic name that instantly comes to mind isn’t that of Wes Craven; instead, the also-sadly-passed George A. Romero is the bespectacled face that is synonymous with that famed corner of horror. With The Serpent and the Rainbow, though, Craven does indeed tackle the zombie topic, just maybe not quite as you’d expect. Instead of hordes of shuffling undead, Wes decides to trace the very concept of ‘zombie’ back to its origins. As in voodoo and Haiti. Bill Pullman is tasked with heading to Haiti to locate the magic ingredient that holds the key to what the locals dub zombies, all so that some swanky corporation can implement the tipple as an anaesthetic product to mass-market.

Jumping from the screen in The Serpent and the Rainbow is the striking nature of the film; both in its lush (and not-so-lush) locations and in its attention-grabbing moments of macabre terror. And throughout the film, constantly prominent is an ever-lasting sense of gritty realism to the tale that’s playing out before our eyes. The zombie angle doesn’t feel merely a run-of-the-mill idea on which to hinge your film while other stuff just so happens to go on in the background. Instead, the topic of Haitian zombies is treated with the utmost respect and clearly extensive research was done from writers Richard Maxwell and Adam Rodman in addition to the elements that were loosely pulled from Wade Davis’ The Serpent and the Rainbow novel.

You may not have paid it much attention previously, the title may even have had you scratching your head upon seeing it in an old VHS shop (man, don’t you miss a good VHS shop, full of unknown delights and all kinds of bonkers cover art?!), but this is one of Craven’s most visually impressive movies, with a subject matter that is handled in a way that feels alarmingly educational without making its premise or central plot points feel like simply a gimmick or yet A.N. Other zombie movie.

Shocker

When Universal sought Wes Craven to deliver a film in the vein of A Nightmare on Elm Street and with the potential to spawn an entire franchise much like Freddy Krueger’s reign of terror in Springwood, the writer/director conjured up 1989’s Shocker. Still, while there are certain elements of Shocker that do mirror parts of the Elm Street series, the ever-thinking Craven managed to make it a completely separate beast to Krueger’s capers.

The most striking similarity between Shocker and Elm Street is the central figure of this ’89 effort, Mitch Pileggi’s Horace Pinker. A thorough bastard of the highest order, this maniacal murder is unashamed in what he does, starting the film with a personal body count of thirty and in a hurry to add more to that number just for shits ‘n’ giggles. After he makes things awfully personal with Michael Murphy’s lawman and son Jonathan (played by Peter Berg – yes, the same Peter Berg who directed Welcome to the Jungle, The Kingdom, Hancock and the god-awful Battleship), Pinker winds up on the electric chair. But it’s here that the real fun begins, with him only becoming even stronger and more deranged once the should-be-deadly voltage runs through his body.

In Shocker, you can tell that Craven is having fun. And surely that’s so much of what filmmaking is about at times, right? Hell, we can’t all be po-faced Christopher Nolans, can we? We’re not saying fun and jollification (Lightning Seeds represent, yo!) should be gushing through every single movie out there, but now and again it’s good to see somebody indulging playfully with their work. With cameo appearances from Craven’s children Jessica and Jonathan, genre fave Ted Raimi, Alice Cooper’s then-guitarist Kane Roberts and Heather Langenkamp of Elm Street fame, not to mention a soundtrack boasting input from Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Megadeath and KISS’ legendary Paul Stanley, Shocker is an absolute blast. And that’s without even mentioning the charmingly effective yet remarkably gripping finale.

The People Under the Stairs

If you ask casual film fans about the films of Wes Craven, you’ll likely get the standard chatter about the Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream pictures. If you’re lucky, one or two might even make mention of The Hills Have Eyes or you might possibly hear rumblings of The Last House on the Left on a good day. One absolute Craven classic that many either haven’t seen or have forgotten about, at least in broad circles, is 1991’s The People Under the Stairs. On the other end of the spectrum, those who are familiar with the movie usually completely adore it and regularly suggest it to be just as good, if not better, than some of the iconic filmmaker’s most famous flicks.

Like so many Craven efforts, The People Under the Stairs is a picture brimming with social commentary and class themes. As the film opens, we see that times are hard in a Los Angeles ghetto. When a young boy and his family are being threatened with eviction from their small apartment, they decide to break into the landlords’ house and make enough money to pay for medical attention for the boy’s sick mother in addition to nabbing themselves plenty of loot to cover their rent and much more – all, of course, while sticking it to the proverbial man (or man and woman, in this case). Said youngster in all of this is Moonwalker’s Brandon Adams as Fool, and he joins Ving Rhames’ Leroy and Jeremy Roberts’ Spenser in this hairbrained burglary. Once in the home of the Robesons – the landlord couple who refer to themselves as simply Mommy and Daddy – the plan goes to the dogs (quite literally, at one point) as this twisted pairing have some rather intense security measures in place, not to mention a crowd of cannibalistic kids trapped and hidden under their stairs. Poor Spenser bites the bullet early doors, and then it’s up to Leroy and Fool to somehow find a way out of this hellhole.

The People Under the Stairs is very much a classic of its time, yet it’s similarly a film that holds up just as well to this very day. While Adams, as Poindexter ‘Fool’ Williams, is on splendid form, particularly when helped out by the willing-yet-terrified Alice (A.J. Langer), it’s the eerie, erratic Robesons who steal the show. Played by Twin Peaks duo Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, they are a haunting, twisted duo, yet their actions and dialogue is often given a deft and humourous touch from Craven. As such, it’s fair to say that The People Under the Stairs isn’t exactly an all-out, balls-to-the-wall terrorfest, instead more a relatively family-friendly scarefest by modern standards. But while there are still moments of luscious lashings of gore and sinister shenanigans, the most striking element of The People Under the Stairs is Craven’s delicate yet vicious satire and social commentary, clearly lamenting the fat cats who will step over anyone and everyone to keep on making money hand over fist.

If you’ve yet to discover The People Under the Stairs, trust us, it’s an absolute delight of a film and truly does stand as one of Wes Craven’s best ever. For those of you who have seen the picture, you’ll know exactly what we mean – and the upcoming network premiere on Horror Channel is something to mark in your diary if you’re long overdue a catch-up with this Craven classic.

My Soul to Take

One final Craven gem that we’re going to touch upon here is 2010’s My Soul to Take. Whilst this slasher may have flew under the radars of many genre fans, it’s notable for being the last feature that Wes would be on triple duty for as writer, director, and producer. In fact, My Soul to Take was the second-to-last movie that he directed before his tragic passing in 2015; the honour of his final film in the director’s chair falling to 2011’s Scream 4.

Now while My Soul to Take is indeed an unknown quantity to some, it’s certainly got plenty to offer genre fans – if not for its cast alone. The tale itself focuses on a small town haunted by the legend of the Riverton Ripper. With the Ripper having been one of seven souls in the body of schizophrenic Abel Plenkov, the local town of Riverton has an annual ritual – i.e. partying, booze, premarital sex – in order to keep the nefarious Riverton Ripper from rising up to cause chaos and carnage once more. Of course, sixteen years later. the worst-case scenario does indeed play out as bodies begin to pile up. In amongst the teens caught up in the terror, front-and-centre we have Max Thieriot (who brilliantly portrayed Dylan in Bates Motel) as Bug. Elsewhere for face-spotters, there’s a brief appearance from Danai Gurira – who would, of course, go on to play the katana-wielding Michonne in The Walking Dead – and a slightly larger role for Frank Grillo. Much like Gurira has become a favourite of many as one of The Walking Dead’s resident badasses, Grillo himself is a hugely popular figure due to headlining the second and third Purge movies, not to mention devouring scenery as Brock Rumlow, aka Crossbones, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and then parts in The Grey, End of Watch, and Zero Dark Thirty.

Sure, My Soul to Take may be a tad formulaic, but more often than not that can be seen as almost a reassuring blanket for slasher films. Things aren’t too predictable, though, for the plot holds some smart and surprising twists once the bulk of the disposable teens have been offed. More importantly, it’s a movie that instantly marked the talented and engaging Thieriot out as one to watch as far as many genre fans were concerned. After all, surely we can’t be the only ones pointing at the tele and shouting “It’s that fella who was really good in My Soul to Take!” upon the young actor turning up as Norman Bates’ half-brother in the phenomenal Bates Motel.

From a Wes Craven perspective, it could be said that he perhaps played it a little safe with My Soul to Take both in terms of its plot and its scares, but then Craven was never one to shock just for the sake of shocking. Wes was a thinking man’s director who liked to try and get under the surface of the obvious, and there are indeed glimpses of such elements at play with this 2010 effort. It may not be up there as one of his all-time great films, but My Soul to Take is a breezy, entertaining slasher that does still manage to catch you off guard with its scares at times.

So there we have it, a quick heads-up on some of Wes Craven’s lesser-known gems. All of which are receiving their network premieres this January on the always-great Horror Channel. What better way to bring in the New Year than by cosying up with some great and grizzly goods from the always-missed Wes Craven?

The WES CRAVEN season runs each Saturday in January on Horror Channel. Sky 319, Virgin TV 149, Freeview 70, and Freesat 138.

Board games have really taken off in recent years, and with a myriad of new stuff out there, it’s sometimes a challenge to sort out to gold from the dross (or the Catan from the Monopoly, in this case). Let’s take a very quick look at games that came out this year (or at least became widely distributed this year), to help you choose what games you’ll be playing in 2018.

Let’s open up with the latest addition to the excellent Pandemic series. In case you’ve missed it, Pandemic is a co-op game where you team up to wipe diseases of the planet before they destroy life as we know it. Though the game has plenty of expansions, the most recent (and exciting) is the Pandemic Legacy series. Legacy games are games where your choices in the game effect subsequent games (and components are added or removed permanently as a consequence of your action). Last year, Pandemic Season One told the story of a devastating plague. This year’s box, Season Two, is the biggest yet and tells a more post-apocalyptic tale. Seriously good fun for your gaming table.

If you want your co-op games with a bit more of a competitive element, take a look at Captain Sonar. This 4 to 8 player game splits people into two teams. It’s basically live-action battleships, with each team listening to the other team’s commands in order to work out where they are. It’s a frantic game of submarine combat and it’s rather good and now fairly easy to get your hands on.

For those who prefer staying in the water (but not in a submarine), there’s Top Deck’s Shark Island. This is basically Jaws the co-op game, with the shark trying to drive people away and the players trying to find a huge sea monster. Fun, quick and clever.

For those of you after something perhaps a little less epic, Century Spice Road is one of our favourites of the year. This game lets you adopt the role of a 15th Century spice trader. The ‘puzzle’ of the game is working out how to build the best trade route. You do this by picking up select cards and adding them to your hand, to build a mechanism where you can get lots of one spice and then trade that for lots of another spice, which you then use to build a Cathedral or curry favour with the royal court.  The person who gets the most ‘stuff’ first, wins. It’s a similar to Splendour, but more elegant and makes the part of your brain that likes doing puzzles very happy.

For those who like their game with a bit more action, the excellent V-Commandos is worth a look. This French game is set during World War Two. You all take the role of some sort of specialist and work together to complete the mission. At times you feel like you’re planning a heist as each of you as a special skill. Blow it and you’ll have to fight your way out and the game turns from a strategy co-op to mad dash and fights for survival. For those who like their action a little less realistic and bit silly, then it’s worth grabbing Fan Hunter Urban Warfare. This highly cartoony skirmish game is set in a world where no-fun is allowed, and the resistance is run by geeks. Cosplayers with working lightsabres go up against armed security forces. It’s very Spanish and it’s designed by Devir, the same people who gave us the highest historical and political Barcelona.

For those who have little ones and want a game to entertain the little ones, the game we loved this year was WooHoo. It’s a very simple game. The box comes with a ‘built it yourself’ elephant slide board and the bottom of the box is a sandpit. It’s a move and roll game about kids fighting over a fun-slide (the game says they’re gnomes, but we all know better). It’s from Brain Games, the same people who delighted our last game with penguin flicking game Ice Cool.  Similarly, child-friendly is Kingdomino. It’s dominos but with a kingdom building twist. You’re trying to get your lands (dominos) in the right pattern to get you the most gold. But so is everyone else. Simple to learn, hard to master, it’s one of those games that fits all ages and temperaments. It was Game of the Year at Essen and it’s easy to see why.

Those looking to lure the family into more complex board games were well catered for this year, though we were especially impressed by Ticket to Ride First Journeys, as take on the classic board game aimed squarely at families. We also loved Ticket to Ride France/Wild West. The French board turned the game on its head by making half the board free of colour restrictions.  Just get enough train cards of the same type and build your railways. The result is a mad and messy dash that turns the game on its head. The Wild West board features city areas and getting control of those gives enough points to give a player a clear win. It also reintroduces Alvin the Alien as sort of wildcard who dispenses bonus points.

Talking about things connected to space, we’ve rather enjoyed the recently released Mantic game, Star Saga, a shooty-kill in space dungeon crawler. It’s aimed at those of us who thought the movie Alien was a documentary and scratches that itch that 80s game Space Crusade left behind.

Staying with space games, the big conversation for much of 2017 was about Terraforming Mars.  This involved game was a bit marmite for many. The complicated board game that puts you in charge of an organisation trying to turn Mars into an Earth-like habitat. It’s a game where you get to drop nuclear bombs on things or blow up moons.  Some love the epic scope, others find it too long, but it was certainly the hottest game for much of the year.

That crown was stolen by the Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game. L5R (as it’s called by the fans) made a big splash in the 90s and then waned as these things often do.  Gaming juggernaut Fantasy Flight Games has since nabbed the license and they’ve done what they always do; take a fun thing and make it better. Legend of The Five Rings is best described as ‘A Game of Thrones’ with more interesting politics, Samurai instead of knights and a really awesome magic system. The monsters beyond the wall are more interesting and the story is more epic.  Back in the day, the results of the card game tournaments informed much of the game’s releases and storyline, and FFG has brought this idea back by creating an absolutely absorbing two-player card game about power, politics, violence, and magic.

If dice games are your thing, then it may be worth taking a look at quick-fire ‘push your luck’ game Imps: Devilish Duels, a quick and easy game of fighting monsters. Each player has to fight a series of elemental challenges (Earth, Fire, Water & Air) using their dice scores in different ways to defeat each other. It’s very easy to play, fits in the pocket and is horribly addictive. If you like you dice games with more stress, take a look at FUSE. This is a dice rolling co-op where you have to fit the right dice rolls onto the right cards. Each card represents a ‘bomb’ component. Get them all and you defuse the bomb. Fail to do this in ten minutes and you all lose. Comes with an app which is basically a timer featuring a sarcastic ‘AI’ voice. For those looking at more sedate experience, then consider Sagrada. The theme of the game is that you’re building stained-glass cathedral windows, so you have translucent coloured dice.  Draw cards, get the right dice combos and score points. The rules make it a randomised Sudoku puzzle, played at speed.

If Sagrada’s theme appeals, also consider colour matching game Azul, a tile drafting/colour matching game from the same people who gave us Century Spice Road. Like that game, it’s a brain-pleasing puzzle played competitively.

And those were the games that we had fun with in 2017. If you disagree or have other suggestions, catch us on Facebook or Twitter and let us know your personal favourites.

As 2018 and all its potential looms ever closer, it’s about this time of year that we have a quick look back at some of the more interesting books that came out in 2017. We aren’t going to stand on ceremony here.  This is a mixed list of stuff that caught our eye over the year, each one chosen because it delighted us in some way.

To start off with, let’s mention Jeanette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun, a notably dense yet utterly absorbing tale of two Victorian Era Christian Missionaries head into the land of fairies to bring god to godless. It’s wonderfully bleak and though it’s hardly poolside holiday reading, it’s rather fun. Speaking of light reading is Andy Weir’s Artemis. Weir is best known for his book The Martian, which got turned into a movie featuring Matt Damon. Artemis is more of the same; believable science fiction (this time set in a moon base), slight less believable characters and lots of friendly science to go with the fiction. Bubblegum it may be, but it’s delicious bubblegum that feeds your brain.

This year also saw Jeff Noon return to form with A Man of Shadows. With a movie adaptation of Vurt planned and growing interest in Noon’s work hitting the mainstream, we were delighted to discover that Noon has not only stayed weird, he’s gotten all the more wonderfully strange.

Fans of strong and intelligent military sci-fi were well treated in 2017. Gavin G Smith joined the ranks of ‘Masters of Military SciFi’ with his book The Bastard Legion, which took many of the preconceived notions of the ‘shooty death in space genre’ and turned them around. This is a book that shouted ‘nope’ quite loudly and proceeded to deliver the sort of action the fans demand, whilst.  Clarke award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky also stepped into this realm with two books. Dogs of War is a gripping take on the rights of sentient beings, which opens up with heavily armed genetically modified animals in a war zone, moves to a war crimes tribunal and moves further along the chain of consequence. Ironclads was a more traditional affair, with power armoured soldiers in a modern warzone and EZ Company hi-jinks, but also a powerful anti-capitalism polemic.

We also adored Yoon Ha Lee’s Raven Stratagem. A sequel to last year’s much-praised Nine Fox Gambit blends science-fiction high concept with high fantasy in a lovely clash of ideas and explosions. A similarly addictive (but entirely different) novel was Ann Leckie’s Provenance, a gripping bit of science fiction set in the world of the award-winning Imperial Radch series. It’s mostly a thriller with the trapping of a sci-fi world wrapped around it, with some wonderfully eye-opening moments peppered throughout.

Speaking of thrillers,  it would be foolish of us to talk about books of 2017 without bringing up Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes, a jaw-dropping work of jealousy and betrayal set in the modern day that has one of the most interesting endings we’ve seen. Fans who like their mysteries with a more fantasy bent may want to check out RJ Barker’s Age of Assassins, a tale about a crippled murderer charged to a protect a prince to stop a war. A stunning debut from Barker.

Other exciting new writers came to us via the excellent Fox Spirit books. The Bushy Tales series of anthologies concluded with Tales of Mice and Minotaur, which contained an amazing take on Medusa and some cracking new talent. Similarly, their collection Respectable Horror delivered the right sort of chills and introduced us to the likes of Rosalind Mosis and Su Haddrell.

Tie-In novels wise, our highlights were the Star Wars 40th celebration anthology From a Certain Point of View, which brought together talents such as Paul Dini,  Wil Wheaton, Chuck Wendig and Kieron Gillen to present some rather beautiful and very entertaining stories.  We also rather liked Judge Dredd Year Two Omnibus. Old Stony Face is hard to write well and this collection of novellas nailed it, especially as it covers the time in Dredd’s life where his very existence is being questioned.

We were also entertained by much of Quirk Books output this year; Paperbacks From Hell provided an essential window into the world of horror fiction and reprinted some pretty amazing covers. They also hit their stride with a series of tie-in books of their own. ET, The X-Files and Home Alone all got the ‘children’s book’ treatment. X-Files ‘Earth Children Are Weird’ is especially adorable. We got a big laugh out of The League of Regrettable Super Villains, a whistle-stop tour of some of the worst excesses of bad ideas from comic book history. They also gave us most of the Star Wars movie in Shakespeare form, much to the delight of geeks everywhere and the terror of many an English teacher.

Our stand-out funniest book came courtesy of Rebellion Publishing. Nate Crowley’s 100 Best Video Games (That Never Existed) took perfect aim at those endless ‘Christmas Stocking Filler’ books filled with bad reviews of obscure games. Instead, Nate just made them all up to hilarious results, producing a well-informed but clearly informed tome and parody of the nostalgia industry.

We’ll have missed loads out, so don’t forget to let us know what your recommendations are via Twitter or Facebook. Until this time next year, carry on reading.

If you are a fan of the massively online multiplayer game then you are probably already aware of Vikings: War of the Clans and if it is not a game that is on your radar, then it should be. Published by Plarium, the web-based game developer, Vikings allows games to build a clan based in the cold far north and attempted to conquer the online gaming world.

The game was originally released in 2015 on iOS, through the Google Play and on Amazon App store but there are now desktop and browser versions of the game available. Plarium have a great track record with the MMO Strategy genre and now have offices across the world from to Russia and America. They have released several titles since the company started out in 2009 but Viking is a game that continues to develop.

The company recently announced through their community communication that they are introducing some new elements to Vikings: War of the Clans, including new RPG elements and characters such as Shaman. This new Hero character allows players to add new building in their world and has also seen a swathe of new enemies released into the frozen lands that require the new characters powers in order for the player to be victorious.

What is interesting about this new element is that it is more than just a one-dimensional add-on. It fundamentally changes the way the player interacts with the gaming environment and should be a hit with the loyal fans that have vested a lot of playing time into their games.

Two new building are now available that give our Heroes more powers. The Hall of Mysteries gives the player the ability to increase their experiences points and the Runes Workshop allows players to create new runes from fragments that the Shaman collects throughout the game. This building speeds up the process in which runes are fused and also gives additional experience points to the players Shaman and Heroes. Having a Shaman also gives the extra advantage of being able to send two different troops into battle in onslaught mode. One led by the Shaman and the other led by the Hero which will just add to the excitement of taking down your enemies and conquering new land.

Building a backstory to give life to the online world is very important if players are to be truly immersed in the game and another element of intrigue is that of the Ghost. These otherworldly creatures now exist within the Vikings as elements of the Viking tales of old. A nice touch is that the Shaman can be used to banish these ghosts which cannot be done by the player’s hero and there are also a number of new resources to be harvested by the new character.

So when you take on the mantle as a Viking leader there is now even more to learn in order to become a good chief and lead your clan to glory. Using these new elements properly will be a skill for players to learn and they will need to learn fast if they are to stay at top of their game.

You really have to wonder at some people’s definition of ‘leisure pursuit’. Exploring caves is fine and dandy, we’ve all done that on our hols, but proper potholing down into freezing, pitch-black caverns hundreds of feet below ground requires a special kind of steely nerve. Physical strength and agility are must-haves, but you also need a clear head and quick wits to ensure you’re ready to take decisive action if anything goes wrong with your rope or harness. Then there’s that squeaking support hook you’ve just hammered into a crack in the rock above your head that’s now bearing your entire body weight as you dangle a thousand feet over a terrifying sheer-drop into the unknown. You don’t get that at Butlins (no wonder they’re down to just three resorts in the UK – Bognor, Minehead, and Skegness to be precise).

One thing even the best cavers don’t expect to encounter in the timeless bowels of the earth is a local population of pale, dead-eyed, cannibal skinheads (for that, you probably would be better off visiting Bognor, Minehead, or Skegness). But that’s the savage reception awaiting six adventuring girlfriends who take themselves off on a North Carolina potholing weekend in director Neil Marshall’s UK horror movie The Descent, released to considerable acclaim in 2006. Their expedition into Chattanooga Park in the Appalachian Mountains (very convincingly realised in Ashridge Forrest in Buckinghamshire and on studio sets at Pinewood) takes place under a cowl of sadness, exactly a year after one of their number, Sarah Carter (Shauna Macdonald) experienced a horrendous car accident that killed her husband and daughter. Did we mention this wasn’t a comedy? It’s not a comedy.

To really hammer in that point, the film begins with a joltingly brutal flashback to Sarah’s horror crash that will have the DIY enthusiasts among you doubling-up the bindings on your roof rack the next time you pop down to B&Q for some copper piping. The next thing Sarah knows, she’s awoken in a rather grim old hospital, screaming in realisation of her predicament. It’s a scream we will come to know very well over the next 95 minutes.

One year on, and Sarah meets up with her friends at an Evil Dead-style cabin in the woods. Here, the sextet is completed by Sam (UK telly mainstay MyAnna Buring), Beth (Alex Reid), Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) plus punky newcomer and self-proclaimed ‘mentalist’ Holly (Nora-Jane Noone). Leading their expedition underground is strident alpha female Juno (Natalie Mendoza), who may well be harbouring a shameful secret involving Sarah’s late husband’s trouser area. There will be some serious ‘to be continued’ between Juno and Sarah.

Soon, the gang commence their spelunking (that’s a word, it means ‘cave exploring’), plunging into the darkness of a deep cavern Juno has selected. While inching themselves through a particularly claustrophobic orifice, their exit is blocked by a rockfall. No problem though – experienced cavers always inform the authorities where they’re going, so they’ll all be rescued soon enough, right? Wrong! Juno has been economical with the truth in more ways than one; not only is this a completely uncharted cave system, she’s told the park rangers they were visiting another cave entirely. So – bugger! – no one knows where the hell they are. Nice one, sister. All the girls can do now is keep venturing on their current downward trajectory, squeezing themselves through ever-more dangerous gullies in the hope they’ll eventually find a way back up to the surface.

When they come to the inevitable giant gaping chasm and begin carefully winching themselves across it, Becca spies a rusty rope hook pre-hammered into the rock that’s at least a hundred years old. So, what befell the people who first came here? The answer comes looming out of dark soon enough in the form of the Crawlers – horrendous, humanoid nasties with a taste for tender flesh. Blind of sight and pure of instinct, their domain is a nightmarish carpet of their victims’ bones. The scene is set for a relentless, desperate battle for survival in the darkness…

A drinking game to spot all the genre references Neil Marshall has coded into The Descent might be fun at first but there are so many of them we’d advise close medical supervision and a stomach pump to hand just in case (our Assistant Editor Martin Unsworth will rent you his for half price if you book it at least week in advance). From the visceral jump-deaths of the Alien series and Predator to the bizarre culture shocks of The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance to the tragic emotional trauma of Don’t Look Now, the film deftly riffs on the classics while keeping enough tricks of its own in reserve to have you grinding your teeth in anticipation of the next nasty jolt. Quite a feat, that.

It’s also to the film’s credit that it doesn’t overplay the all-female angle. If you come to The Descent expecting a meta-textual redefinition of the horror film through a feminist gauze, you’re better off watching Aliens again. Because, thanks in no small part to Sigourney Weaver’s pioneering work, the action-horror gender rulebook has been re-drawn to the point that it may only occur to you afterwards that, bar the opening scene, there are no conventional male characters in it at all.

Unconventional male characters? That would be the Crawlers (female ones too, we assume). Truly nightmarish demons of the dark, they resemble Gollum’s full-size cousins, but are more effective for being played by actors in costumes and make-up rather than rendered with tiresome mo-cap CGI. No offence, Andy Serkis, but this is one gig we’re glad you didn’t get. Neil Marshall envisaged the Crawlers as cavemen who never found a way out, evolving over thousands of years to become pale, blind savages. Despite only a few onscreen hints to their origin, we instinctively understand that they are not really monsters at all, which, like Wes Craven’s savage predators in The Hills Have Eyes and the tragic cannibal in the London Underground classic Death Line, only makes them more horrific as a concept.

As the haunted Sarah, Shauna Macdonald has the scream queen toolkit down pat. Tortured by survivor’s guilt and paranoid around Juno, the darkness drives her ever further into hallucination and mania. By the final act, she’s tearing about like the missing link between Marilyn Burns from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Sissy Spacek from Carrie. Rather pleasingly, when she’s not streaked in blood and sweat, Macdonald bears a striking resemblance to Catriona MacColl, Lucio Fulci’s leading lady of choice during his early ‘80s imperial phase of ocular violence and maggots.

Sharing lead duties as hard-ass expedition leader and de facto villain Juno, Natalie Mendoza plays up the nervous tension with Sarah, superficially keen for the trip to repair their relationship but unable to paper over her own duplicitous streak or a thirst for danger that ends up pitching the whole gang into the seventh circle of hell. Her full-blown Terminator-mode in the final act gets the pulse racing and brings a redemption of sorts, but let’s face it, with friends like Juno, who needs enemies.

The ensemble supporting cast have their work cut out trying to distinguish their characters in the darkness, but all deliver winning turns that make the necessary business of getting gorily picked off one-by-one by savage cavemen far more emotionally resonant than in your average gorefest. We know the territory; it’s not so much will they die as when and how nastily. Inevitably, there’s a tonal gear change halfway through The Decent when their low-key naturalism is supplanted by the broader dramatic clichés we expect when death is a sudden possibility. But, like the crew of the Nostromo in Alien, because the character groundwork has been skilfully laid from the start, each time fate does come calling, there is a genuine sense of loss amid all the snapping of bones and ripping of flesh.

This was Marshall’s second feature following Dog Soldiers (2002), his bonkers tale of werewolves vs. squaddies in rural Wales. He’s since directed Doomsday (2008) and the Michael Fassbender vehicle Centurion (2010) but The Descent remains the critical high watermark of his movie career to date. More recently, he’s forged a path directing high-end genre TV shows, including well-regarded episodes of Game of Thrones, Westworld, and Hannibal. Marshall is currently lined up to direct episodes of next year’s reboot of Lost In Space before returning to the big screen for yet another reboot – this time of the Hellboy franchise, though not, sad to say, with Ron Perlman returning to the title role (and the Perlmanverse is sadder place because of it). Jumping ship from TV to cinema franchises isn’t always plain sailing, of course – just ask Marshall’s Game of Thrones alumnus Alan Taylor, who underwhelmed with Thor: The Dark Word and Terminator Genisys before hungrily re-attaching himself to the GoT teat like a ravenous infant. But to us, Neil Marshall and Hellboy sounds like a good match, so fingers crossed he won’t need to ‘do an Alan’ soon afterwards.

The Descent certainly did the business on release, making $57 million worldwide from a modest production budget of £3.5 million. Far be it for us to get sniffy about UK-centric horror films, but we suspect a major factor in its success was the nifty trick it pulls off making us think we’re watching an American movie. The international cast, very convincing location work, excellent studio cave sets and a sprinkling of American vehicles all add texture to the illusion, but the real reason is Neil Marshall’s genre-savvy direction, born of his love of horror films and innate understanding of how the likes of Carpenter, Raimi, and Craven twitched the nerve of audiences worldwide. His flair for action is just as vital – that precarious, chasm-crossing scene will have beads of sweat jumping off your forehead, while the Crawler attacks – a blizzard of savage movements and quick edits – are kinetically brilliant moments. Visually, Marshall and cinematographer Sam McCurdy achieve wonders. Using the pitch darkness of the cave as their base canvass, they paint the screen with probing torchlights and the eerie glow of red and green flares before giving it over completely to the full-on hallucinatory assault of the final act.

It all adds up to a low-budget independent horror movie that looks amazing and lacks for nothing. It’s a good job it wasn’t made twenty years earlier, as it would probably have suffered the indignity of being a Golan/Globus Cannon production with all the grotty association that went with it. But by the time The Descent was released in 2006, thanks in no small part to the prior success of The Blair Witch Project, the ‘low budget horror’ stigma was in the process of being dispelled. Now, in 2017, the tables have turned so profoundly that it’s genuinely surprising when a major studio horror movie delivers anything close to the ferocious energy of independent gems like this.

Eleven years on from its release, we’re pleased to report that The Descent has lost none of its power. A slick and brutally efficient sucker punch of contemporary horror shot through with classic influences, you’ll need a stiff drink or three afterwards to stand any chance of getting to sleep. Pour us one while you’re about it, would you? Down the hatch…

You can enter the world of THE DESCENT when it screens on Horror Channel on December 20th. Sky 319, Virgin 149, Freeview 70, Freesat 138.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a former professional wrestler who has done what Hulk Hogan failed to do in the 1990s – become a successful actor.

The 45-year-old has been a star in Hollywood for more than 15 years now with his part in The Mummy Returns at the start of the millennium being his break out success.

Johnson has gone on to star in multiple box offices successes since and here are his top 10 highest grossing movies:

10. The Other Guys (2010 – $119.2m)

Dwayne Johnson only played a small part in Adam McKay’s 2010 box office success, The Other Guys. At the start of the movie the American actor plays a cocky police detective alongside his partner Samuel L. Jackson. During an early pursuit in the movie, Johnson and Jackson leap to their deaths after misjudging their ability to survive a fall.  Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell play the leading roles, replacing The Rock’s character as one of the leading detectives in the city.

9. G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013 – $122.5m)

The second movie in the G.I. Joe series after 2009’s success of The Rise of Cobra. This was Johnson’s first appearances in the series, playing the role of Roadblock. Along with characters played by D.J. Cotrona and Adrianne Paliciki, they are the only survivors of a military air strike.  They form a plan to overthrow the Cobra Commander and his allies.

For his performance in this movie The Rock was nominated for both the Teen Choice Award for Choice Action Movie Actor and Favorite Male Buttkicker at the Kid’s Choice Awards.

8. Central Intelligence (2016 – $127.4m)

Dwayne Johnson plays Bob Stone, who, 20 years earlier had been picked on in school and is now much changed.  Reuniting with an old school buddy who had become an accountant, they try to stop a criminal known as the Black Badger. He was also a producer for this movie.

Playing his role of Bob Stone led to nomaintions at the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Comedic Movie Actor, the Critic’s Choice Award for Best Actor in a Comedy and the Teen Choice Award for Choice Summer Movie Actor. The Rock won the Kid’s Choice Award for Favorite Best Friends with Kevin Hart.

7. Get Smart (2007 – $130.3m)

The oldest movie in our list, Get Smart was released in 2007 with Johnson playing the role of Agent 23. He is idolised by Max Smart; a highly intelligent but socially awkward spy who has been tasked with preventing a terrorist attack from a Russian spy agency.

Johnson was nominated for the Best Villain role at the MTV Movie Awards for his performance in this movie.

6. San Andreas (2015 – $155.1m)

The 2015 movie San Andreas is centered on an earthquake caused by the San Andreas Fault which has left Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area devastated. The Rock stars as Chief Raymond “Ray” Gaines; a Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter-rescue pilot making a dangerous journey with his ex-wife across the state in order to rescue his daughter.

The Rock was nominated for four awards following his performance in San Andreas – the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Action Movie Actor, the MTV Movie Awards for Best Action Performance and Best Hero, and the Teen Choice Award for Choice Summer Movie Actor.

5. Fast Five (2011 – $209.8m)

Dwayne Johnson’s only box office movie in 2011, Fast Five was the fifth installment of The Fast and the Furious series. He plays the role of U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) agent Luke Hobbs who is pursuing three street racers who are planning a heist to steal $100 million from a corrupt businessman.

The Rock earned a nomination at the Teen Choice Award for Choice Action Movie Actor as a result of his performance in Fast Five.

4. The Fate of the Furious (2017 – $225.7m)

Released earlier this year and taking in more than $225 million was the eighth in the The Fast and the Furious franchise.  Johnson continues his role as Luke Hobbs when his ally, Dom, is seduced by a mysterious woman into the world of terrorism and a betrayal of those closest to him. As a result the crew face trials that test them like never before.

His performance again led to a nomination at the Teen Choice Awards for Choice Action Movie Actor.

3. Fast & Furious 6 (2013 – $238.6m)

Fast & Furious 6 which centered around Luke Hobbs and his allies Dom and Brian reassembling their crew to take down a team of mercenaries. The plot twist sees Dom facing his presumed deceased girlfriend, Letty.

Dwayne Johnson earned a nomination at the Teen Choice Awards for Choice Summer Movie Actor.

2. Moana (2016 – $248.7m)

In Walt Disney Pictures’ 3D computer-animated musical fantasy-adventure movie Moana, The Rock dubs the voice of co-star Maui who is a legendary demigod that Moana sets sail in search for following a blight on her island. Her hope is to return the heart of Te Fiti and save her people.

As a result of his performance in this highly popular animation, The Rock earned nominations for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance, the Black Reel Award for Outstanding Voice Performance and Kid’s Choice Award for Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie and Favorite Frenemies (with Auli’i Cravalho). He also took home the Teen Choice Award for Choice Fantasy Movie Acor.

1. Furious 7 (2015 – $353m)

The highest-grossing movie from The Fast and the Furious franchise was the seventh installment where Dwayne Johnson is part of an all-star cast that includes Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Kurt Russell and Jason Statham. The team have returned to the USA to live normal lives after securing amnesty for their past crimes in the previous installment. However, Deckard Shaw (Statham) seeks revenge against Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his family for his comatose brother…