The Descent: Part 2 (2009)
Directed by: Jon Harris
Written by: J Blakeson, James McCarthy, James Watkins, Neil Marshall
Starring: Jessika Williams, Michael J. Reynolds, Shauna Macdonald
I must say, i haven’t come away feeling so angry and bitter at a film in some time. I suppose, hugely let down. The signs were there that this was a stinker, but in the back of my mind i just hoped that most reviewers had got it wrong. Sadly, in my humble opinion, they got it absolutely right.
Sarah has escaped, but has no memory, so has to go back down the caves with a right twat of a sheriff, his woman deputy, and a bunch of cave rescue people I really couldn’t give a shit about. The original had characters, some back story, fuckin personalities! All we get here is a woman who cannot act to save her life, is possibly put in for eye candy but what’s the bloody point as you can’t see anything anyway! A total dork who clearly fancies her and is painfully obvious whilst trying not to be, as i said, the Sherri is a right twat, and he has this brainwave to cuff himself to Sarah near the end for fear she will “run out on him like she did Juno”. The only person, apart from a painful to watch Sarah, that was remotely interesting was the cave rescue leader, at least he had some backbone!
So we head down the caves, and Sarah freaks out and runs off, the sheriff chases her, fires a GUN (again, the word TWAT comes to mind) and we all get split up and a bit lost. Actually, it was ok up until this point, it had some tension and the caves had a good creepy sound and feel to them. However, it has none of the power or originality of the first, and uses far too many flashbacks and even a recording found in one of the girls camera to “remind” us what happened. It’s a waste, we KNOW what bloody happened, and the more you see of the first, the more you realise just how shit this is!
The Crawlers come out to play and I must say, I did not jump once. Now, in the first, I lost count how many times I jumped, the timing on those scares were genius. There is no timing here, and whereas in the first, the majority was shown thrown the night vision camera they had, here, it feels like it’s in broad daylight! Yes, you read that right, its feckin bright down them caves, and i don’t mean torch light. You can see everything, and the Crawlers, to be perfectly honest, look a bit crap. All the brilliance of the original is lost by having too much lighting, it has lost everything the first created.
There are some good tense scenes; one in particular has the woman deputy and Sarah swimming in very tight caves. Yes, they do make use of the caves being small, but it never really hits the heights of claustrophobia from the first. This is far more brutal, however, and there are some pretty good deaths. A personal favourite was a Crawler having a rock literally squash his head The brutality on offer here doesn’t make up for its crapness, but it helps make it bearable. As Hughes mentioned, there is a toilet scene that is, quick frankly, daft, pointless and almost turns the whole thing into a farce.
SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All the way through the film, i got very angry because all anyone ever spoke about was Juno. Juno this, and feckin Juno that! Five girls went down originally, and only Sarah came back, so what about the rest. No one knows they’re dead, so what was all the fuss about Juno???? Did i miss something???? Anyway, she makes a return and i really REALLY REALLY wish she hadn’t. She turned out to be the most annoying person of all. Overacting, over dramatic, far too cheesy and saying one liners that were out of place, not funny and not even important. She irritated the hell out of me, she really did. The end was all Americanised and a bit gung-ho for my liking, and again, too cheesy. And then there’s the final scene, daft daft daft!! Why not just throw her in, for fuck sake!!!
In short, i didn’t like the Descent 2. I wanted to, I really did, but I just couldn’t. I’m sure I’m being overly harsh, and I reckon many on here will like it, but i just couldn’t get my head around hey someone could fuck something up so bad and spoil the memory of Neil Marshalls classic. I would love to be able to make the third myself; it’s easy to figure out how to make this a really really scary experience. Have another group go down, and they have night vision cameras attached to their helmets and we have a handheld horror, like (Rec). Think about it for a minute, the Descent made up almost entirely of night vision and only seeing what the characters see, so you would have a lot of darkness and then sudden movements as a Crawlers jumps right out on your face!!!!!!!
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