Like a Dagger to My Heart

The Descent: Part 2

Directed By: Jon Harris

Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, & Krysten Cummings

It is not an exaggeration to say that The Descent is probably the best horror movie of the last decade. It was a brilliantly scary and emotionally compelling movie that single-handedly upped the ante for modern horror. When it was announced that a sequel would be made, I was immediately hesitant. After all, Neil Marshall's masterful original (with the original ending, not the dreadful American edit) was so wonderfully self-contained. It told a story that had a perfect beginning, a perfect middle, and a perfect ending. When I learned that the sequel would not have Neil Marshall involved as writer or director (he did both for The Descent) and that it would inexplicably use the American ending as a basis, I was dismayed. Already, my relationship with The Descent: Part 2 had hit a snag. But being the die hard fan of the original that I am, I was determined to make my relationship with this sequel work somehow. I rewatched the original ahead of time, reminding myself just how flawless it really is, and then headed into this movie with a sense of dread. By the time we witness one of the cave creatures pooping into a pool of excrement that contains the two main characters, it was safe to say that I was finished with everything about this sequel. By the time the atrocious ending, which promises yet another unwanted sequel, kicked into play, I was clawing my eyeballs out of my head.

This movie picks up one day after the events of The Descent. The apparent only survivor of the first cave massacre, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), emerges drenched in blood and with no memory of the last two days. A doctor tests the blood on her clothes and finds that it is A-positive, the same blood type as Juno (Natalie Mendoza), one of the other missing women. A dip-shit police officer, Vaines (Gavan O'Herlihy), immediately suspects that Sarah might be responsible for the disappearances of the other women. Now, anyone who has seen the original knows that this is a stretch; Sarah, after all, fell into a huge sea of blood and should, therefore, have had many different blood types on her clothes. In fact, though she did stab Juno and leave her to die, the only amount of blood that seemed to splash on her from that, if any, was just a few drops. But, wait, it gets even worse. Vaines decides that he must bring Sarah into the caves with a rescue party to try to find Juno and the rest. The idea that a police officer would bring a psychologically-traumatized woman back into the place that scarred her with no evidence that she did anything wrong is ludicrous. It is an all-too-convenient plot device to get Sarah back into the caves and it establishes the movie right from the beginning as pedestrian. It is desperate and pathetic.

The crew arrives in the cave to immediately find the body of one of the women, and Sarah begins to have flashbacks to the events of the original. As she grows to remember more and more, her animalistic instinct for survival reemerges...and just in time too, because soon the crawlers come out of the shadows in search for fresh meat. Only she can guide the members of the rescue team through the cave and protect them from the ungodly creatures that will do anything for lunch. And that is about all there is to The Descent: Part 2, a movie that is seemingly satisfied with just being a mindless creature feature, whereas its predecessor was constantly pushing the boundaries of cinema. Sure, director Jon Harris has thrown out more blood and gore, leaving no human appendage untouched. Heads, hands, torsoes, and more are crushed, crunched, and eaten...a fact that will surely delight gorehounds, but do little to satisfy those of us who wanted to see more of Neil Marshall's masterful storytelling abilities or the taut tension he injected into every frame of The Descent. There are scenes here that seem to border on such greatness, but they never fully develop. The screenplay, lacking focus or a solidly-structured narrative, always jumps away to the next scene before we have enough time to fully digest what we have just seen. Remember in the original when Sarah became stuck in a small tunnel and the camera stuck close to her face for what seemed like eternity, building unbearable tension until you, yourself, almost started screaming? It was so memorable and terrifying. Well, nothing even close to that happens here...

In a behind-the-scenes featurette included on the DVD, Shauna Macdonald says, while referring to the risk of making this sequel, "You can think, 'Oh, we have a fan base; they're going to come anyway.' Well, they may come, but they're going to be ready to go, 'That's not as good,' but, you know, it is." Actually, Ms. Macdonald, it's not...not even close. Though I appreciated that she and Natalie Mendoza were willing to return to this sequel (their strong performances being the only reason I didn't give this movie zero stars), I can't help but feel that they only did so because of a paycheck. The same goes for Neil Marshall who is attached as an executive producer. This sequel has, in some small way, tainted the legacy of its predecessor, because the people responsible for The Descent sold their cinematic souls to make this one. They have created a movie that takes everything the original did so well and then sucks the life out of it all. If a sequel to any beloved movie has to be made, it must show respect for its predecessor. This one simply doesn't. It doesn't even use the actual ending of the original, instead using a controversial and lame studio-edited version that was uninspiring and lacked the soul of the actual ending. It makes its most fatal mistake, however, in reintroducing a character that met an appropriate and bitter end in the original, pretending that she somehow survived an attack that Marshall had strongly suggested killed her. It took the poetic justice out of that scene in the The Descent, unforgivably cheapening it for no reason.

It is not the mere fact that this sequel is unnecessary; it is that it is so painfully lazy and dull. It copies when it should invent and, when it does dare to be creative, it is never as effective as it should be.  The movie seems to only have been made to wrap up the stories of Sarah and Juno, as the newly-introduced characters are poorly-developed and serve primarily as just bodies to throw in the pile. But, Neil Marshall had already concluded the stories of Sarah and Juno so nicely in The Descent that it seems pointless to bring them back. A better sequel could have been made by just using the original ending Marshall had intended for his movie and beginning freshly. That way, the pathetic plot contrivance that set this sequel into motion would have been gone and it wouldn't have felt that The Descent: Part 2 was betraying its predecessor by simply existing. As I have said, there are times when this movie finally seemed to be connecting (i.e. when one character must swing across a chasm on a dead body suspended from a rope, while a crawler tries to kill her), but these moments are few and far between and they are overshadowed by lifeless scenes that show no creativity or ingenuity. This movie is undeniably one big mistake. Trading the original's pool of blood for a cliched pool of shit was an error in judgement on behalf of the filmmakers, but it does sum up my feelings for this movie quite nicely.