The Descent: Part 2
Shauna Macdonald in The Descent: Part 2
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Genuinely unsettling, unbearably tense - this modern take on a simple premise is a horror phenomena for all the right reasons. |  |
Monday, 30, Nov 2009 04:22
Directed by Jon Harris, out December 4th in cinemas, starring Shauna Macdonald, Gavan O'Herlihy, Joshua Dallas, Anna Skellern, Douglas Hodge, Krysten Cummings, running time 93 mins.
What's it all about?
Two days after the events of critically lauded 2005 horror The Descent, Sarah Carter (Macdonald) emerges from a network of Appalachian caves dazed, confused and very, very bloody. After an insanely brief stay in hospital, she's forced to return to the below as part of the rescue team searching for her missing friends. And as Sarah and the rescuers move deeper into the caves, it becomes clear they're not alone...
As an example...
"Six girls came down to this cave - one came out covered in her friends' blood. So, you tell me what the hell happened here??" - Sheriff Vaines
What the others say
"As horror in the thrill-ride mould, The Descent: Part 2 certainly delivers cheap sensations aplenty." - Anton Bitel, Little White Lies
"An uninspired retread of a horror classic, this tries hard to justify its existence... and fails." - Nev Pierce, Empire
So is it any good?
Without the shock of the new, and with Neil Marshal out of the director's chair, The Descent: Part 2 was never going to compare favourably with its predecessor, so it's somewhat of a surprise that it's entirely watchable. Though Jon Harris (editor on the first 'part') and a three-strong writing team are forced to work from a ludicrous premise - and one that only works as a sequel to the open-ended US cut, rather than Marshall's stand-alone original - there's enough fun to be prised from the blood-splattered walls of the deep.
You'll need to take the painfully stretched plot with a large helping of salt - in what world would a traumatised amnesiac survivor of an underground disaster be sent back down there? - and the supporting cast's acting ranges from the dull (Cummings) to the inexplicable (O'Herlihy, as the worst police officer ever seen on film). Macdonald's also a cipher of a lead, with a minute range, so it's a relief to find the excellent Skellern amid the admittedly nerve-wracking momentum of the subterranean search.
But once a tension-free opening is enlivened by an archetypal burst out of the dark, and the bizarre multinational feel of the cast is ignored, this sequel does a fair job of reprising the primal fear that made the original one of the best horrors ever made. While the new breed of 'Crawlers' are at their most effective when seen in the shadows - as they're revealed in close-up to be cheap, half-arsed facsimiles of Golllum and the Uruk-Hai - the endless possibilities of the labyrinthine caves means a whole host of inventive and brutal scares are available to Harris and co.
An icky and misplaced coda is concluded in sadly predictable fashion but for all its failings, The Descent; Part 2 is a sparse, effective horror with dark laughs and nightmare chills. Just don't compare it with the first one.
6/10
Lewis Bazley