The Descent: Part 2
The film seems intent on covering the cast in as much mud, blood, and slime as possible, falling back on the conventions of gross-out cinema and abandoning the subtlety that made the first film so refreshing.

You may remember the closing scene of The Descent as a bleak and horrific example of delusional hope. As the humanoid crawlers approach hungry for more human flesh, the remaining cave explorer Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) crouches hallucinating and seems oblivious to her fate. We are left wondering how much of the narrative has been true, and whether large parts have been imagined or presented in a skewed way. Convention suggests she should escape; we are lead to believe she does until the last minute, but the film took the brave step of denying the audience a traditional ending – one of the reasons why the film stood out as original, dark, and horrific.

With all the characters from the first film brutally dispatched, the options for a sequel seem limited. It turns out, and what a surprise, Sarah’s fine. She did escape, although quite how is never really explained, and this initial cop-out sets the precedent for the rest of The Descent: Part 2. After escaping the caves with a fragmented memory, Sarah is forced to return along with a police rescue team to try and discover what happened to her friends. Soon remembering the full extent of her ordeal, Sarah, escapes from the suspicious police chief, splitting up the group. The team encounter the crawlers relatively early on in the film, much more visible on-screen than the original monsters, with one memorable screen featuring a lingering close-up of a crawler’s head being crushed by a rock. It’s disgusting stuff, and hugely entertaining, but unfaithful to the creeping horror of its predecessor. The sense of claustrophobia is lacking, with shots too brightly lit to create any sense of menacing darkness and the creatures that lurk within it.

Perhaps the one redeeming feature of the film is the return of Shauna MacDonald who manages to play Sarah as an extension of her brilliant turn in The Descent, not allowing the reimagining of her character to hinder her performance. While the new characters are clumsily rendered as stereotypes, Sarah emerges as a Ripley from Alien figure, equally nerve-ridden and steadfastly intent on survival. The idea of Sarah being made to return to the caves so soon after being admitted to hospital following her original ordeal is fairly ludicrous, and a shaky platform for the sequel, but MacDonald continues her character’s journey in a plausible way, given the circumstances.

The film seems intent on covering the cast in as much mud, blood, and slime as possible, falling back on the conventions of gross-out cinema and abandoning the subtlety that made the first film so refreshing. One particular scene in which two characters find themselves in a rather unsavory pool of water hammers this home to a laughable extent. At times it feels a little like one of the Saw films, as corpses from the first film pop up all over the place in a self-referencing fashion. The video camera from the first film, along with an explanation from Sarah to another character, helps to fill in some of the necessary back-story but feels labored. This aside, The Descent: Part 2 could very well stand alone from the original, but only as one of a long line of mediocre and forgettable films.

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