#564. Critic Pick : The Decent 2 [2009]
The Descent 2 is an upcoming British horror film, a sequel to the critically acclaimed 2005 horror film The Descent. The film was shot in London and is currently awaiting release. The film is being produced by Christian Colson and co-produced by Paul Ritchie with Neil Marshall, the producer and director of the original, as executive producer.The sequel will continue the story of Sarah who, as the only known survivor of an all-female caving expedition gone horrifically wrong, suffers severe psychological trauma. She accompanies a rescue team back to the cave but events once again take a sinister turn.The Descent 2 picks up immediately after the events depicted in The Descent. Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) emerges alone from a cave system following an expedition with her five friends in the Appalachian mountains. Distraught, injured and covered in the blood of her missing companions, Sarah is incoherent and half-wild with fear. Skeptical about her account of events and convinced Sarah's psychosis hides far darker secrets, Sheriff Vaines forces her back into the caves to help locate the rest of the group. Trapped by falling rocks, the rescue party is driven deep into the caverns, and as one by one the fate of the missing girls is revealed. Sarah struggles to stay alive and once again encounters the evil in the deep.
Genre : Horror
Directed by : Jon Harris
Written by : James Watkins
Starring : Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza
Music by : David Julyan
Cinematography : Sam McCurdy
Editing by : Jon Harris
Release date : September 11, 2009 (US)
Viewed at the Marche du Film, Festival de Cannes 2009
Picking up almost immediately where The Descent left off, the bloodstained Sarah has made it out the cave system, is taken to hospital and then back into the caves as an unwilling member of a rescue party to find her missing friends.If you saw the first film, then you know what happens in this one. If you know the horror genre, then you know who will get offed, too. None of which matters a hoot, because familiarity breeds respect and cast, director and writers, deliver exactly what viewers want. There are the crawlers, lots of blood, some nicely delivered shocks, plenty of gnarly special effects and women getting down, dirty and deadly with climbing axes, bare hands and lumps of rock.
Because all concerned have resisted the urge to widen the story, introduce new things for the heck of it (such as, I dunno, flying crawlers), The Descent: Part 2 is actually much stronger than is usually the case for sequels.A left-field twist right at the end could be a set up for part 3, but it's hard to tell. While it didn't come as a surprise (those horror genres again), it did feel a bit tacked-on. But that's a very minor quibble and does nothing to detract from what is a great piece of horror entertainment and a worthy successor to its predecessor.[reviewed by Simonster, Berlin Germany - May 13, 2009]
