Showing posts with label the descent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the descent. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

The Descent: Part 2 (2009) 1h 34m


When I covered the original Descent film in the last cut, I had one of those gut feelings that I was going to get stuck with its sequel sooner rather than later.  That's how Netflix works.  It tries to predict what you will want to watch based on what you have already viewed.  Unfortunately this is kind of a shit model because I end up watching a lot of crap for this website.  Keep in mind that I still roll dice to select these films so I can only assume that Netflix either is or is in cahoots with some sort of demonic entity hellbent on making me watch trash.  Like a less goofy Dr. Forrester.

The Descent Part 2 picks up pretty much where The Descent left off.  Sarah has escaped and is taken to a hospital where small town/big dick Sheriff drags her back out to go into the caves to find the rest of the missing girls.  The team is ST/BD Sheriff, a deputy, a small crew of specialized rescuers, and our girl.  Sarah, dealing with hardcore PTSD, has amnesia at the start until she suddenly remembers and goes into Rambo mode in order to escape.  Otherwise, this is kind of the same film as the first.  A cave-in happens, the creatures fuck shit up (as they do), and we eventually have a sole survivor... kind of.

The sheer existence of this film is unnecessary.  Ignoring the four year gap between films, The Descent Part 2 doesn't add anything to the overall lore of the caves or the creatures.  The only two additions we do get are that one of the creatures has a more feminine appearance with long black hair and what appear to be beast shapes without nipples, and the other addition is that we have a scene where we see one of them take a shit into a pool of water two of the women are in.

I have to talk about this "female" creature though because this is the stupid shit that keeps me up at night trying to work it out in my head.  First: adding breast shapes make the creatures more mammalian.  Given that they have a human/bat hybrid kind of look to them, I can understand that.  My issue is that without nipples then the creature wouldn't be able to nurse as that's a trait found in mammals.  So why have breast tissue at all?  Second:  Every single one of these creatures are bald, except for her.  Assuming she is an adult, why does she not have hair down to the floor?  Finally:  Are we to assume that if there are a "male" and "female" gender that these things fuck?!  How do they fuck?  There's nothing visible that we could even consider genitals!  Do they have a cloaca?  If they do, then this goes back to point number one of the beast tissue!  Why am I so worried about this one creature seen for 10 seconds in a shitty film?!

And this really is a shitty film.  Deaths are predictable and at time comical at how horror-by-numbers they are.  The dialog is absurd, we are never given any backstory about anyone despite the mentioning of specific past events, and the very ending of this film might as well be a zoom in on a middle finger aimed directly at the viewer because we're never going to get an explanation for it.  We're also given this awkward fan service with the return of Juno, having survived in these caves for however long with only a climbing pick and sass!  How long has she survived?  Dunno.  No clue.  Time doesn't exist underground!  Only weird monsters that cause me to toss and turn while I'm trying to figure out how they smush!

I give The Descent Part 2 0 caves out of out of 5:

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

The Descent (2005) 1h 39m


I'm not sure how, but I have never watched this film before.  I've heard really good things about it, knew the general plot, and liked the fact that the poster copies Salvador Dali's "In Voluptas Mors," yet I have never felt the urge to sit down and watch The Descent.  Then the universe decides it's time and I have to sit down and watch it.  The question is, over a decade later, will I like this as much as other people did?

The Descent leads us along with a group of women coming together to do some cave spelunking.  This is their first group outing since the death of the husband and child of one of their members (Sarah).  While it's meant to be a healthy and healing gathering, their interpersonal issues cause a lot of tension, especially when a new girl is introduced to the group.  What was planned as a simple trip down and through an established cave formation turns dangerous when the planner actually takes them to an undiscovered cave and a cave-in traps them inside.  Lost in unmapped and unfamiliar terrain, they attempt to find a way out but instead find why no one has ever survived to talk about these caves.

Okay, confession:  I don't think this lived up to the hype.  It was close, I'll say that, but I think the difference in time might be what knocked The Descent down a few pegs for me.  About 90% of this film I was down for.  The only things I found lacking were: 1) I wish the Native cave paintings would have included something about the creatures.  Even just one weird little mud guy slapped on there.  2) The creature design didn't do it for me.  I think this is because I've been watching too much FaceOff (the show, not the movie) but it's just this bat/human hybrid which is such a go-to design for something cave dwelling.

Oddly enough they made a sequel to this movie in 2009.  It even has Shauna Macdonald reprising her role of Sarah.  I can only assume this was a cash grab on the popularity of the first movie.  Odds are if it ends up on Netflix then I'll end up watching it for this site.

I give The Descent 3 pictures of why I will never go spelunking out of 5: