Fear runs deeper.
Rating: 5/10
Running Time: 94 minutes
US Certificate: R UK Certificate: 18
Back in 2005 The Descent was an unexpected success from Brit director Neil Marshall – a man who has made it his job to revitalise the British horror scene of late. Marshall rightly ran away from The Descent: Part 2 like it was a burning leper but they managed to secure the services of Jon Harris who’d previously proven his worth with the understated but worthy Eden Lake. The change of hands was surely a recipe for a fresh approach to the evil monsters-down-a-pothole scenario but, alas, The Descent: Part 2 is an uninspiring, lacklustre attempt to keep the bandwagon rolling.
The second installment returns to the caves of Appalachian Mountain where Sarah (Macdonald), Juno (Mendoza) and their four friends went missing. Sarah is found by the roadside, hysterical covered in blood and conveniently lacking in memory. Unable to remember where she’s been, nasty and seriously dim Sherrif Vaines (O’Herlihy) forces her to go back underground with a team of professional mountain rescuers. Sending Sarah down again without so much as a leash is both really cruel and really risky as she is seemingly drenched in the blood of her friends. It soon dawns on the new of group of walking takeaway that they are not alone and something is lurking below – which we all know because we’ve seen it all before but we have to sit through a frustrating hour waiting for them to click.
Everything about Part 2 is too similar to the original to justify a sequel. We have the same monsters in the same cave with some of the same main characters. It is consistently scary and I did go through a few pairs of pants but all the shocks add up to the same denominator – screeching monster-face popping out of the dark. Some aspects are lost but they are the wrong ones. In the original it was refreshing to see the group dynamic fall to pieces and the women turn on each other, yet in Part 2, they inevitably all pull together in the end. It’s weird that it is so similar with a different director at the helm.
All in all, another pointless sequel and, what’s more, the rather ambiguous finale to the film leaves it wide open for a third installment. Hoorah.
It's Got: the same caves, monsters and characters.
It Needs: Something new - anything at all
Summary
A pointless sequel with predictable shocks that doesn’t deliver anything new.