The Descent 2

A Sheriff suspects that Sarah has killed her friends and forces her to return to the caves with a rescue team.

Even after the UK ending of The Descent, Sarah still manages to get out but is forced back to the uncharted underground to help locate her five missing companions.

I'll try not reminisce over the amazing first film, there appears to be some mixed comments on The Decent: Part 2. If you did like The Descent, for the record the follow up even with the tantalising story setup it is sadly a huge disappointment.

Surprisingly the excellent editor Jon Harris gives a poor directorial debut. Even with some of the strong original cast including Shauna Macdonald and Natalie Mendoza, they simply can't save J Blakeson and James McCarthy poor screenplay. On board is Eden Lake's writer James Watkins and support from cinematographer Sam McCurdy (The Descent, Dog Soldiers, Doomsday to name a few).

It feels and looks like a poor mans interpretation of the Descent, it's not a straight to video production but its almost there, awful dialogue, little if any character development, no suspense and poorly executed scares and that's just touching the surface. The film looks rushed, the lighting, sets, sound, direction, everything on screen looks cheap and nasty. It lacks the grittiness of the first and the Crawler's don't look as menacing or a realistic.

It is only worth watching to see how film with such great talent can go so wrong.

Following the events of the first movie, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) is taken to a hospital. She has memory loss. A rescue team searches the caves for the missing women. A dog tracks one of the woman to an abandoned unexplored mine. Sheriff Vaines (Gavan O'Herlihy) takes deputy Elen Rios, Sarah, three cavers, and old timer Ed Oswald down into the depths.

The horror of the cave dwellers is diminished this time around. They are no longer the surprise of the first movie. The first issue is Sarah's position in the eyes of the law. At the hospital, she should be a suspect in murdering her companions. It would have been a more compelling position to put Sarah into. Once in the tunnels, the movie gets back into the claustrophobia which is so vital to the previous movie. There is one terrific section where a woman is trapped in a cave-in. One returning character is beyond belief. Overall, the shock is gone and this sequel fails to reach new depths.

Somehow, they've managed to crap all over the mystery and wonder of the first film. I wouldn't have thought that possible, but here's two hours worth of what basically amounts to the same movie with different angles. There's a fine line between horror and annoyance, and the difference is evident between the original film and this sequel. The first had some great character development, witty dialogue, an intriguing plot. All of those things have been substituted for B-movie versions of same. Huge plot holes, impossible scenarios, expositional dialogue, and an ending that makes both films seem pointless. Don't even get me started on why there is light in some of the caves deep underground.

THE DESCENT 2 is like FINAL DESTINATION 2 or WRONG TURN 2 or about 100 other horror sequels, in that we get more of the same and it's usually not as good as the original. In this case, the editor of the first movie is the director of this one, and clearly wasn't given the greatest script to work with. But he does about as good a job as anyone in his position probably could. A rescue party goes into the caves to find the missing girls from the first movie, and they drag a shell-shocked Sarah from the first movie along with them. We do not have to wait long for the cave creatures to show up and start eating the would-be rescuers. Since we have been through this once already, there is far less shock value this time around. There are, however, a couple of kick-ass fight scenes and the film is perhaps even bloodier than the original. Accents are all over the place, as it was filmed in England and not in Appalachia, where it is supposedly set. In truth, Part 2 is not a must-see unless you are dying to see what happened to Sarah.

In the first The Descent movie, where Sarah was the only survival of a caving expedition, Neil Marshall (director and writer) chose to keep the ending open to different interpretations of the real cause of what happened. For me it is that open end that gave an added value to the first episode. Unfortunately someone, probably commercialism and money, decided to create a sequel. In any sequel the storyline is simplified to a brainless horror movie with a fairly guessable storyline.

There is also nothing to say about good acting or the development of characters.

If you have seen The Descent this sequel is certainly not worth it. But if you want to see a brainless horror with some jump-scenes it is acceptable.