The Descent 2 - Review *SPOILERS*

[David Hawk]

Firstly, my apologies but try as i might i can't seem to be able to review The Descent 2 without including spoilers so if you don't want to have this film spoiled for you, please leave now.

Anyone still here? Excellent.



The story picks up literally where the original (If you're American) left off, with Sarah escaping the caves. The local authorities have begun searching the caves for the missing girls and when Sarah turns up (with memory loss) they quickly decide to take her back down into the caves to help look for her missing friends.

This time around The Descent's Writer/Director Neil Marshall wisely takes a back seat as a Co-Producer, so its left to the editor of that film Jon Harris to pick up the reigns.
To be fair he knows how to cut a film and does a good job of making some of the better scenes fraught with tension, BUT...



...that's about it.
The film unravels at a rapid pace and not in a good way. On the surface this is a virtual retread of the first film but if you tug at the loose thread hanging limply by its side the whole thing comes undone in your front of your eyes.

Continuity will have you scratching your head at every turn as light seems to be coming from literally everywhere when there wasn't before, holes in rock falls appear when mysteriously there were none previously.

The decisions that the characters make will leave you with a brain aching so much you would rather watch Freddy Got Fingered on loop for the next five years as one minute someone is determined to live through this experience (a sentiment i shared) and the next willing to give their life away at the drop of a flash light.

And the ending, oh dear god the ending, the introduction of a 'Big Daddy' crawler is just soul sappingly bad and the actual ending with the craggy-faced old guy from the start of the film makes absolutely no sense at all, none, there is nothing the writers J Blakeson (Mist: The Tale of a Sheepdog Puppy?!?) and James McCarthy (?) could say that would make it right.
You cannot have a character like craggy-faced man help Sarah at the start of the film only to then show he not only knows about the crawlers but actually helps feed them! The whole film rests on the fact that this guy found Sarah at the start, if he knew about the crawlers and didn't want anyone else to find out about them, why in the name of all things good and Filmic did he not just bloody kill her on the deserted road where he found her?!?!?!?

This is another case of case of sequelitis, Aliens or Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back this is not, come to think of it, its not even Teen Wolf Too.



2 out of 5 bloody hands, only because the claustrophobia was well done.

[Sheridan Passell]

I thought the first one was highly over-rated, so I can't say I'm sorry to hear this.

[dalmatianjaws]

Agreed. Not a fan of that director. I turned off Dog Soldiers halfway through and I've seen enough of that ridiculous "Scotland has the plague" movie to know he's been overrated from the start.

[David Hawk]

Agree with you both, i liked The Descent, it had some great moments for me but was ultimately undone by its own feeling of being better than it actually was and as for the sequel, i knew it was going to be bad but there really isn't any excuse for how poor it really is.

[Sheridan Passell]

There were nice moments atmospherically in the first one, especially in the first half. But I've regularly seen it talked online in the same breath as The Thing, or people including it in their top 3 horror movies, and that's just ridiculous. It doesn't feel like it was made by a master, rather by someone who's watched all the masters.

[dalmatianjaws]

It doesn't feel like it was made by a master, rather by someone who's watched all the masters.

Well put. The weakness comes from the script. The Thing was simple and brilliant, The Descent was just simple. And agreed, the first half is very tense. Though, to be fare I've only seen the American version that has a shitty ending.

[David Hawk]

There's no way The Descent would make my top 10 let alone my top 5.

And i know there are some serious quote whores out there who just live to see their names on a poster but seriously, how anyone can call this "This years scariest film" (BBC Radio 5) and even worse "The feel shit scared film of the decade" (Metal Hammer) just completely beggars belief, yes i know those guys are not exactly bastions of quality review but still, come on.

[Sheridan Passell]

What the hell is Metal Hammer?

[David Hawk]

Haha its a magazine that caters for fans of Heavy Metal music