DVD Reviews

The Descent, Part 2 – DVD Review

By Patrick Luce Apr 26, 2010, 18:39 GMT

Dazed, bloodied and speechless with trauma, Sarah Carter emerges alone from the Appalachian cave system where the events of The Descent took place. Local sheriff Redmond Vaines forces her back underground to help the rescue team which is desperately searching for her five missing girlfriends. As the team moves deeper into the caves, Sarah’s flashes of fractured memory intensify and she begins to realize the full horror of the would-be ...more

The Descent: Part 2 will feel familiar to fans of the 2005 original film, but the sequel does manage to break enough of its own ground to feel somewhat new – mostly thanks to a widening of the cave setting, adding a few new kinds of crawlers, and giving fans some new characters to watch get turned into lunch.

The film is also a direct continuation of the original’s storyline so a couple of characters from the first movie return.

The Descent editor Jon Harris steps into the director’s position for the sequel with Neil Marshall (who wrote and directed the original Descent) moving to an executive producer role. Harris also edited the film – which featured a screenplay by J Blakeson, James McCarthy, and James Watkins.

The sequel also saw the return of original Descent cinematographer Sam McCurdy, composer David Julyan and production designer Simon Bowles. One of the sequel’s strengths is how closely it managed to match the look, feel, and sound of the original – which is due in a large part to the return of so many talented people behind the cameras.

While the original cast of women pop up in a few scenes (thanks to flashbacks and use of a video camera that is found in the cave), Shauna Macdonald's Sarah and Natalie Mendoza's Juno are the main returning characters.

In fact, much of the film’s heart revolves around the two characters confronting each other in the cave (Sarah left Juno for dead in the last film after using a climbing pick on her leg), and rebuilding their friendship – or as much bonding as you can do while cave crawling mutants are trying to eat you.

The film kicks off right where the first movie ended with Sarah running for her life. She wakes up in the hospital and discovers she can’t remember a thing of where she has been or what happened to her friends. A massive rescue operation is underway because Juno has a politically famous father.

The problem is the rescue is taking place at the wrong location since Juno filed a different plan with the ranger’s station and took the group of friends to another cave in the first film.

Sheriff Vaines (Gavan O'Herlihy), deputy Elen Rios (Krysten Cummings), and cave rescue specialist Dan (Douglas Hodge), Greg (Joshua Dallas) and Cath (Anna Skellern) decide to explore the cave on their own to keep the media away. They also take Sarah along for the ride in hopes that being back underground will help spur her memory and get them to Juno quicker. Naturally, everything goes to hell once they get underground and run into the cave’s local residents.

Once the first attack happens, Sarah’s memory pops back into focus and she takes off with Rios in tow. She doesn’t seem to know a way of out the cave, but she does know how to keep the crawlers from turning her into lunchmeat.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the good sheriff and the cave rescue specialist. The sheriff gets a little trigger happy underground which in turn sets off a cave-in that traps the group. They then get separated and have to learn quickly how to survive. The lessons often come at a very brutal and gory expense – The Descent, Part 2 does not shy away from gore or blood.

After traveling underground Vaines, Sarah, and Rios manage to stumble onto Juno – who is still very much alive, but also a tad nutty from her time underground with the crawlers. The first reunion between Juno and Sarah isn’t too nice as Juno tries to repay Sarah for leaving her, but they quickly realize they are going to have to work together if they want to escape. The rest of the film is made up of the women trying to get out and even some healing moments of friendship between Juno and Sarah.

While the Descent, Part 2 feels like a sequel (and even somewhat unnecessary given how great the first film was) throughout the entire film, it does manage to sometimes get into your head and give a scare or two the way the first film did. This time the audience knows about the crawlers and has an idea of what to expect, but that doesn’t stop the film from still getting the shots as claustrophobic as possible or letting things jump out of the dark at just the right time.

Unfortunately (or at least for me), the film also went for the cheap gross out factor and tried to make several scenes as gory as can be. While this is sometimes effective, the special effects of some of the blood isn’t believable (such as when a character gets their hand chopped off with repeated blows of a climbing pick) – which makes the film feel a little on the shoddy side.

The story is a bit hokey from time to time and not as believable as the first film. While the crawlers might not have been the most believable aspect of the first movie, the women being stranded underground with no known way out added a believably to the plot that made it get into your head while you watched.

It is entirely unbelievable that a cave rescue expert team would consider going underground without telling anyone where they were or that the local sheriff would haul Sarah back underground – or even go himself. I also liked how poor Rios was forced to go underground too so she could help with Sarah’s mental state – even though she isn’t trained for this sort of climbing or psychology. 

Still, this is a horror film and it isn’t one that is supposed to be weighed on the minor plot points that don’t quite add up. It is supposed to be graded on how well it makes you jump, think twice about watching it in the dark, and how long it continues to scare you after you hit stop on the player.

Well, The Descent, Part 2 doesn’t scare as well as the original, but it might make you jump a couple of times. There is nothing to be scared about watching it in the dark, unless you hear some munching noise behind you (it was my son who had wandered into my room to see what I was watching). It flat out won’t keep scaring you after you hit stop on the player. In fact, you will probably forget about it pretty quickly – even though it is a decent little horror film.

The DVD comes with some decent special features which I really enjoyed and demonstrated how everyone was committed to trying to make a sequel that held up to the first film. The features include a look at the making of the film which details pretty much every aspect of the movie and has interviews with cast and crew. There are some deleted scenes that don’t really matter too much, and commentary.

The Descent, Part 2 is not as good as the original film, but it is not as bad as many horror sequels. The film treads on the same ground as the first film, but also adds something new to the story. If you are a fan of the first Descent, this one is worth checking out, and doesn’t completely ruin the work done in that movie.

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