1. Style and content
The narrative structure of the film is two halves. Firstly there is the tragedy and
cabin scene, and then the second half is cave exploring with the survival and
horror aspect. To add context to the movie, the first half was used to make Sarah
the kind of character nobody believes due to her mental issues. The first half is
also used to trick the audience into predicting the horror to be hallucinations
rather than the crawlers therefore the first appearance of the crawler could
shock the audience and frighten them at the same time. In the second half, the
characters go through a series of horrific moments with gaps long enough to
cause the audience to get scared again but not so long that they stop being scared
altogether. Whenever a crawler comes out of nowhere, there are screeching
sounds edited in to make the scene a jump scare.
This film does use ‘Todorov’s narrative theory’ even though the ending does not
seem to restore equilibrium. In this theory, a successful movie will begin at
equilibrium, then have some kind of issue bringing chaos. This will lead to a
realisation of what is happening followed by a solution which brings everything
back to equilibrium. The problem is, this movie does not clearly get past the
realisation stage because there is no resolve to being in a cave with monsters due
to the characters being killed.
Firstly, there is a state of equilibrium. This is where they are all friends and go on
a raft together. Nothing is wrong yet and they are clearly happy all the way up to
when they get to the cave entrance.
Next up is the destruction of that equilibrium. This is where they begin to realize
Juno sent them down an undiscovered cave and the main entrance is blocked.
Stage 3 is where Sarah, the protagonist, realises the broken equilibrium as she
sees the first monster but her friends do not believe her.
Further on is the attempt to repair equilibrium. Sarah and her friends fight back
against the monsters and manage to get further into the cave as well as finding
arrows of a previous visitor’s route.
There is finally a solution even though it is not clear. At the end of the movie,
Sarah dies and sees her daughter again, which is all she wanted. This somewhat
brings back equilibrium despite every character having been killed, therefore
making the film obey this theory.
