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In Neil Marshall’s 2005 horror film The Descent, a group of women go spelunking and become trapped deep underground in a winding, disorienting cave system The women are athletic and trained, their storylines and inter-personal relationships tense and toxic, complicated by hidden affairs and neglected friendships The film is terrifying: the downfall of the group — and the framework for the whole, horrifying sequence of events that unfold — rests solely on one woman’s inflated ego and her brittle ambition to be the first to map and claim this as yet unchartered subterranean cave system They begin to act brutally towards each other Yet it makes a nice, albeit rare, change to see women acting horrendously, instead of the usual male-on-female violence that proliferates horror films and real life The film is a portal to a nihilistic hellscape dominated by amorphous yet vaguely humanoid flesh-eating creatures who begin to hunt the trapped women indiscriminately by following their voices Foregrounding both female strength and flaws, the subterranean not only becomes a home to violence, but seems to give permission for violence to be freely practiced The movement of the film speaks to the familiar lines from Dante, seen on arrival at the gates of hell:   Through me you go to the grief-wracked city Through me to everlasting pain you go Through me you go and pass among lost souls Justice inspired my exalted Creator I am a creature of the Holiest Power, of Wisdom in the Highest and of Primal Love Nothing till I was made was made, only eternal beings And I endure eternally Surrender as you enter every hope you have   Jenny George’s debut book of poems The Dream of Reason submerges the reader in subterranea from its first few lines, finding a linguistic parallel for the technique used in The Descent to induce a sense of horror from the start Just as the women in