Review: The Descent 2 (2010)

"A Descent indeed... into the caves of suck."

Cast Members of Note- Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, and some other people that played other parts, whom I'm not going to list.

Picking up minutes after the events that ended The Descent, where Sara escapes from the ground and yells into the sky, she runs off through the woods and proceeds to attempt to car-jack some poor rural rube driving down the road, with the help of a decoy deer... and that is the most interesting part of the movie.

Sara is hysterical, to the point that they have to sedate her and put her out. Seconds after they sedate her though, she's awake and answering questions for the Cops, looking wide-awake and coherent, although she doesn't remember anything. Naturally, with no memory of anything and being heavily drugged, the Sheriff decides to take her out of the Hospital so that she can head back down into the caves to "show them around." Makes perfect sense to us.

She looks fine to me.

So the Sheriff, his Deputy, and a traumatized Sara (along with three rescue workers), head down into the cave system via elevator (?!?), hell-bent on finding survivors. You know that it's not long before the slimy mongoloids that dwell below find them, and start dispatching them one by one, ripping necks and causing fountains of tomato soup to erupt everywhere. I'll say no more (mainly because I have nothing nice to say about this movie), but I will leave you with this: worst ending ever! Alright, maybe not ever, but dammit if the end of this movie wasn't so bad that I wanted to bash my own face off of the nearest wall until I passed out.

I didn't though. I won't give The Descent 2 the satisfaction. Nyah!

Yep, that about sums it up.

The good.. let's see... it ended? This movie was a disappointment on a massive scale for me, and I'm not sure what I can say about it that's actually good, other than it only ran for about 90 minutes, then ended.

Gone is any of the magic that made 2007's The Descent such a great and effective Horror movie. You know, like a tight script, taut directing, fresh and creepy ideas, and near flawless execution? Here, please be so kind as to allow me to rant for you...

Where to start? The premise of bringing a newly traumatized victim of such a tragedy, who is now safe and lucky to be alive, back underground where said trauma took place putting here right back in the face of potential danger, is ludicrous. No Cop on Earth would do that, and if they would, then they suck at being a Cop. "She can tell us to go right or left." Really? You need a wounded, mentally-frayed amnesiac to help you decide which way to turn? Whoever wrote this movie failed. Big time.

The characters were dandy too, though I'm not sure whether their actions or dialogue was more insipid and frustrating. Both were equal, I think. Shauna Macdonald overacted, which may be what she was directed to do, but as the film wore on, the emerging of her tough chick persona became painful to watch. The chick who played Juno (yes, she's alive, and I don't care if that's a spoiler) was even worse, making me facepalm myself several times with her over-the-top insane actions and poses. Again, the script was bad, so maybe it's all on the writing team, but the actors just couldn't get it right. I won't even discuss the Sheriff and his Deputy, as I don't want to sound like I'm being mean just for the sake of being mean.

This face was made 236 times during the movie... by me.

The gore and violence were laughable, though both were really graphic and plentiful. The blood looked like tomato soup, and whenever someone attacked one of the creatures, the way it was choreographed and shot was silly. Even more silly was the way people froze or tried to sneak by the creatures in every other scene; the part where two people magically leap 10 feet into the air, press back to back and climb the walls of the cavern with only their legs was seriously hard to watch. I wanted to laugh and cry, because by that point, the movie was making me sad.

The direction needs to take a shot in the nuts here to, as much of what was on-screen just seemed campy rather than creepy, or even dramatic. The movements and the faces characters made, how certain scenes played out, the jump scares and obvious "It's behind you! Turn around! Oh, you turned around too slowly, and now it's gone..." That happened every 3 minutes.

Yes, the actors actually mugged for the camera.

There wasn't a thing in this movie that wasn't obvious, cliche', or that you won't see coming from about 742 miles away. Who wrote this script? I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, but this movie was so far-fetched and ridiculous with most of its actions, that about 30 minutes into it I was checking my watch (figuratively of course) praying for it to be over. *I don't actually wear a watch. You know what I mean though.

Meh.

I can't remember the last time I saw an ending to a Horror movie that was this bad. Where did that lame-ass twist come from, and what was the point? I literally rolled my eyes and laughed at the same time. Wow.

"Whargarrbl!"

They must have thought that gallons of tomato soup-looking blood and a ton of excessive violence would make up for the fact that the movie sucked so bad, because this one is all sorts of gory. Gross even. At least it might satisfy the Gorehounds.

Sequels often suck. Also, this sequel sucked a lot.

Glare at me all you like, you know I'm right.

It's as simple as that. This movie was just bad, and embarrassingly so. How they went for a great, fresh original, to a laughably bad and painful sequel, I have no idea. Mistakes were made. Many of them. This movie played like most Direct-to-DVD messes tend to, but was more painful than any of those end up being, because this one was supposed to be better. It was almost guaranteed to be good, but it just failed.

Go watch the first one, and forget that this debacle even exists.

Not even Shauna Macdonald and her sexy friends could save this one...