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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The Descent: Part 2 (2009) Horror

The Descent: Part 2 - The original The Descent was a horror revelation with its all women cast, dark and terrifying confines and scary and menacing monsters. Now four years later we have the sequel, starting just after the American ending in which Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) makes it out of the cave system we open with the search for the women at the cave they were supposed to have explored before Juno switched things up. Hard nosed and headed sheriff Vaines (Gavan O'Herlihy) forces Sarah, who says she can't remember what happened down there, back into the cave system with a rescue team, himself and officer Rios (Krysten Cummings). The scenes that set this up are poorly written with a mine entrance as the access. To get there the sheriff send a deputy with a dog to pick up Sarah's trail, but we know from the first film that she did not come out a mine entrance and thus there is no way the dog could pick her scent up there. It is just an excuse to have a way back down with out revealing too much about the creatures to come.
There is quite a bit of this clunky screenwriting, and example is before they go down the lead rescuer Dan (Douglas Hodge) asks the cops to leave their guns behind because of the danger of a shot causing a collapse down in the caves. Naturally Mr hard head Vaines keeps his gun and you can guess what happens in the cave. Even worse is when they get to that scene Dan points out some rocks and how it looks unstable right before the gunshot starts the collapse scene. grrrrr...

In the caves they quickly have trouble and soon stumble upon the creatures who are meaner and maybe not so soft as they were in the first movie. We also get to see the dead bodies of two of the cavers from the first movie. Sarah remembers and soon turns into the fierce fighter we saw at the end of the first movie. Remarkably the cave experts are all killed off first leaving Sarah, Vaines and Rois fighting for their lives while looking for a way out. They then run into Juno (Natalie Mendoza) who is still alive even after the last movie left her surrounded by creatures and wounded. What a fighter that Juno is! There are some bigger and harder fought encounters from the first movie and the gore factor was increased for the sequel. In the end there is a twist that certainly is setting up for part three so watch your straight to DVD review sites for that. Overall the film is a poor little sister to the first movie lacking a singular vision or writing creativity that make you care about the characters.
Rating (3.2) Skip it , no really, not worth the trouble.

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