Let’s get the obvious out of the way.
There’s no way a sequel to “The Descent” would rival the chills delivered by the 2005 original.
No sequel could match that film’s intensity, girl-power theatrics and the shock of seeing those pasty crawlers for the first time.
“The Descent: Part 2″ nonetheless delivers more than enough creepy moments to justify its existence. And, when compared to the current wave of horror remakes – and “Saw” sequels – actually stands above its competition.
Just don’t hold its direct-to-DVD path against it.
The sequel, out April 27, finds Sarah (Shauna Macdonald from the first “Descent”) hospitalized two days following the events of the first film.
She has no memory of what happened to her and her cave-hunting friends. So when the investigation into their disappearance hits a road block, the local sheriff (Gavan O’Herlihy) asks her to go back to the cave to help guide them.
Yeah, right.
You’ll have to swallow a few Hollywood-style tricks, like the oh, so convenient memory loss, to understand why Sarah would go back down into those nasty caverns.
But once you do, you’re in for a modest treat. The new band of heroes isn’t as compelling as the first group, but they’re also not cookie-cutter types all but asking to be bumped off.
Most of the horrific elements which made the original so compelling are still functioning fine here – the inky darkness, the sense of near suffocation and those flesh-eating critters who emit that awful trilling sound.
It all works. Again.
“Part 2″ is a sequel in every sense of the word, leveraging the characters, dramatic arcs and setting of the original.
This time around, Sarah is part Ripley, part Barbra – the near comatose female lead from 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead.” Her memory comes back in flashes, transforming her from victim to something the crawlers don’t want to mess with.
The film delivers its fair share of “slap your head in amazement” moments, something most horror films simply cannot avoid. And the gore is ladled out so aggressively it feels like they’re trying to one-up the original in any way possible.
But there’s also real ingenuity on display here, both in individual scenes and the predicaments faced by our poor heroes.
The ending hints at a third installment, but the final moments also play up the franchise’s strongest element – the fiercely protective mothering instinct.
It’s a mystery why “The Descent: Part 2″ couldn’t snare a theatrical release in the U.S., but the film still does justice to the source material even if it can’t match its scare quotient.
(Photo: Actress Shauna Macdonald returns as Sarah, the cave-dwelling heroine, in “The Descent: Part 2.”)
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
“Just don’t hold its direct-to-DVD path against it.”
I think it came a surprise to most that it ended up that way, since it wasn’t intended as such. I’m surprised that it didn’t even get a Blu-ray release. Talk about dumping a film into the market. Good to hear that it isn’t the disaster that they are treating it as.
“The Descent’s” cred in the horror realm is sky high … why not let the sequel hits a few hundred theaters? Seems a sure thing to make $20-plus million in a theatrical run.