The Chamber Drama of the Underground

Mysticism, paranoia, and madness in cave horror

Despite our immense technological advances, humans are admittedly hopeless in the dark — when no sunlight is to be found. We seek treasures within the Earth: solace, gems, discovery. Caving and mining have been lucrative activities for millennia, and occasionally the stuff of both legends and adventure, from Indiana Jones to the California Gold Rush.

For most people, though, the underground is a place of danger, ruin, and worst of all, temptation: a place where physical rules fail to apply and civility can quickly give way to brutality. All those themes are the core elements of cave horror, a distinctive subgenre of horror mixed with psychological thriller.

When we’re underground, isolated from our diurnal natures and the freedom of movement, we turn nasty — whether or not there are nasty creatures lurking in the dark.

Spoiler warnings: This article contains mild spoilers for The Cave, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, The Superdeep, The Descent, Beneath, Time Trap and As Above So Below.

Destruction and Desolation in the Cave

Caves aren’t simply dark: they’re unique ecosystems with creatures that defy Earth’s usual laws. Cave horror thrusts the painfully diurnal Homo sapiens amidst creatures that will eagerly consume them: in more ways than one.