“There is no happiness for Sarah outside that cave.”

So said director Neil Marshall of his film The Descent, now celebrating 20 years since its 2005 release. Marshall spoke with Empire about his hit film in which female spelunkers encounter bloodthirsty subterranean creatures during an ill-advised caving adventure. At the end of that movie, Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) believes she has escaped, but it is later revealed that she is still trapped in the cave only hallucinating her freedom.

Marshall referred to the plotline of the 2009 sequel, The Descent Part 2, in which Sarah does make it out of the cave and aids a rescue mission to find her lost friends. Marshall only served as a producer on that film and considers this ending to be inadequate.

“Her family’s dead, her friends are gone, she’s completely insane. The best version of it to me was Sarah being, in her head anyway, back with her daughter. So that’s the only ending there is, as far as I’m concerned,” Marshall said.

He told Empire that he is interested in a third film in the franchise to “wrap up the story,” and has been considering making a prequel. In another interview with Metro UK earlier this week, he’s quoted as saying, “I’ve got a few ideas [for a third film}. The trend seems to be prequels. I was always interested in finding out what happened to the miners who went down with the cave first.”

The Descent remains a fan-favorite in the horror genre two decades after its release. In it, Sarah and her friends, played by Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, Nora-Jane Noone and MyAnna Buring, who go caving in an uncharted system on the anniversary of the death of Sarah’s husband and child. Marshall both wrote and directed the film.

Though there are no plans in place yet, Marshall is optimistic for a third film. “I can definitely see it happening […] So many other franchises have been exploited over the years, but nothing has really happened with The Descent.”

There will be a special screening to mark the 20th anniversary of The Descent held at London’s Odeon Luxe. A retrospective book, The Making of The Descent, which takes fans behind the scenes of the cult classic, was released on August 21st.