Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

The last time we saw Sarah Carter (Shauna Macdonald) she had just capped off a really bad day that included still coping with the death of her husband and daughter, learning her best friend Juno (Natalie Mendoza) was doing her husband on the side, and watching her friends get brutally devoured by a bunch of blind underground mutants during an underground cave exploration party. Totally Juno’s fault. By just about anybody’s measure of a bad day, that was a bad day. Sarah made it out of the cave but her friends did not, and as such these friends need to be found which is how ‘The Descent: Part Two’ begins its story. A sequel that isn’t nearly as good as the first movie, for reasons we will touch on later, but was still entertaining. But…dang… More on that as well.

A couple of hours pass, even though it feels like four years or more, and a crew has been looking for Sarah and her homegirls mainly because Juno is the daughter of some senator, otherwise I’m sure they could care less. Sarah, at this time, is in a hospital and doesn’t remember a damn thing. Nothing. Man… it would be really beneficial if she could remember something and let these good folks know what just went down a couple of hours ago. Since she can’t remember anything Jerk-Off Sheriff Vaines (Gavin O’Herily) is dragging poor Sarah out of her hospital bed and forcing her to come along with this hastily assembled cave team to traverse back down into those mines to find the missing women.

This team consists of hardcore cave diver Dan (Douglas Hodge), his right hand man Greg (Joshua Dallas), his left hand woman Cath (Anna Skellern), the Sheriff and the his deputy Ellen (Kyrsten Cummings). We observed Ellen, before the descent, talking on her celly telling her young daughter how much she loved her which doesn’t bode well for Ellen surviving this movie. Plus she’s a minority. Poor Ellen. We should mention it doesn’t make a heck of a lot sense for the Sheriff and his deputy to go down into these caves, mainly because they are ridiculously unqualified to do so, just like it doesn’t make sense for Sarah to get dragged out of the hospital to go back down in the mines. They tell us Sarah is going because she knows where her friends might be. They forgot the part about Sarah having amnesia which I’m told makes it hard to remember stuff. Regardless, we will roll with it.

Mind you all of this setup takes almost no time at all and just like that we are in the mines, the blind CHUD’s are overjoyed that more meat has been voluntarily delivered their way and death, mayhem, chaos, copious amounts of blood splatter and CHUD’s dropping turds is now underway. And to think that Sarah just made it out of this hole a couple of hours ago. Even though it feels like four years.

Neil Marshall’s ‘The Descent’ was a really, really effective horror thriller. There are a number of reasons that the previous movie is far better than this sequel with the primary reason being character. The original took a lot of time in setting up the characters, allowing us to get into their lives a little bit and building up a back story for these ladies so that when they did start dying it had some emotional impact. Plus the original kind of tilted towards a psychological thriller, in addition to being a horror flick since the CHUD’s were mostly hidden and we never really knew where they were or where they could be hiding or when they would suddenly pop up and start sliming folks.

So it is established that ‘The Descent’ is far superior to ‘The Descent: Part Two’ but what the sequel has working for it is that it is four years removed from the original so its inferiority is downplayed considerably by the factor of time. In fact I had to go back and read what I wrote about the original to jog my memory on some things. The time gap allows ‘The Descent: Part Two’ to kind of stand on its own. Standing on its own, this sequel is a completely ridiculous, fast moving, hyper gory, claustrophobic monster movie. Director Jon Harris picks up where Neil Marshall left off in story, but all of that meddlesome character development was left on the cutting room floor since this movie was all about CHUD’s chomping necks and CHUD’s getting their domes split open in all kinds of imaginative and gory ways. I did note that when the CHUD’s got their heads split open no brain matter oozed out. Hmmm…

To that effect, as a fast moving nonsensical hyper gory monster movie… ‘The Descent: Part Two’ was effective. Then it had to go and muck it all up with a stupid ass twist ending. I mean the movie was stupid as it was, but… SPOILER ALERT… to have our family oriented minority shockingly survive and then get clubbed on the head by the old miner we met earlier, then thrown back down the CHUD hole… what was up with that? Why did he do that? The real problem with this stupid ass twist ending is that this old fool is the one that found Sarah in the first place. If he was trying preserve the privacy of the CHUD’s he could’ve clubbed Sarah right there where he found her and then tossed Sarah in the CHUD hole and saved me ninety minutes worth of movie watching. That lone scene made a dumb movie completely retarded. Who thought that was a good idea? Now there has to be a search party formed to find the search party.

Inferior to the original, marginally effective on its own, ruined by a stupid twist ending. You guys are killing me over here.