The Descent: Part 2

Pitting ferocious subterranean cannibals against a group of kickass lady cavers (this is not a euphemism), Neil Marshall’s The Descent is a strong contender for the best British horror film ever made. Brutal, uncompromising and claustrophobic, it runs its disturbing premise right to the end of the rope.

The remit for this second instalment, directed by original editor Jon Harris, seems to be: don’t screw up the franchise – and he largely succeeds. However, as with all horror rehashes, adhering to the formula is not quite enough when we already know what awaits us down there in the darkness.

Neither a great film, nor a bad sequel, Part 2 picks up round about where Marshall left off. Traumatised heroine Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) emerges amnesia-ridden from the Appalachian caves, and before you can say ‘Don’t go back into that underground deathmaze!’ the writers contrive to make her do just that. Not, admittedly, very well.

Strong-armed into joining the Worst Rescue Expedition Ever Mounted by David Gilmour lookalike Sheriff Vaines (Gavan O’Herlihy) – a character so fucktarded you wonder how he walks and speaks at the same time – Macdonald’s soon being lowered down a rusty mineshaft (also not a euphemism) by resident Crazy Ralph, Ed Oswald (Michael J Reynolds). Big mistake.

Besides some crusty dialogue (“There’s nothing down here that could have done this!” says one patently-not-correct character) and the endless cat-in-the-fridge moments (when something unscary leaps out at the audience unnecessarily; see What Lies Beneath), the film eventually finds its feet.

Capably shot, scored and acted (particularly by Macdonald, who flips convincingly from catatonic victim to Ripley-style heroine), it refuses to skimp on the claret or the claustrophobia, but remains tense rather than scary. How much of this is down to the solidity of the film itself, and how much is down to the cleverly evoked echoes of its source material is debatable.

Other than an exciting underwater sequence and the comedic misadventures of Sheriff Gilmour, there’s little new here; the film’s best moment arriving as our heroes rewatch the original’s iconic infrared reveal on a discarded camera. At one point they even clamber over the corpses of the original film’s victims to get to safety. It’s not, on reflection, a bad metaphor for the entire enterprise.

Matt Glasby

Anticipation:

Please don't mess this up.

Enjoyment:

Actually, how could they?

In Retrospect:

Efficient if underwhelming.