Last Updated on December 9, 2024

When you end up making an all-time classic movie, there’s a more than insignificant chance that a sequel will happen. This can be something that happens almost immediately like the Friday the 13th or Saw franchises or it can be a part of this new breed of legacy sequels that occur 20, 30, or even 40 years after their original entries. Both of these can work with the immediacy of striking while the iron is hot and following trends immediately or by being patient and tugging on the public’s nostalgia strings by bringing out the original actors and creative team. What doesn’t work usually is what The Descent Part 2 did, with original creator Neil Marshall stepping aside and the movie releasing four years after the original. It already had an uphill battle going against the first movies powerhouse out of nowhere showing and its… admittedly not as good. It either gets outright ignored or openly hated by most who discuss it. Sounds to me like The Descent Part 2 is Black Sheep material.

The first Descent was released in 2005, and I remember going to see it with my co-worker and friend Kevin Johnston after we closed Blockbuster for the night. It was late at night, far later than I can usually make it to movies 3 kids and 20 years later, but the movie instantly grabbed me and even at 20 years old, I had a hard time sleeping that night. I’m not even claustrophobic, just afraid of being devoured by blind cave creatures in an unidentified part of the U.S. so I can imagine that only adds to it. I got the DVD and explored all the special features and the alternate ending too. The original ending has Sarah, our final girl and main character, waking up to a hallucination of her daughter instead of actually escaping. It’s a great and dour ending that plays with all of the other dreams and hallucinations she has throughout the movie. The other ending, the one that works for the purposes of having a sequel, just doesn’t have the impact or ferocity that the downer one brings to the table. Neil Marshall, the director of the first film, didn’t want to write or direct the sequel so he stepped into a producer role. Enter editor Jon Harris.

I don’t just mean that he’s an editor in general although he has been Oscar nominated and done nearly 50 films including stuff as recently as this year with the James McAvoy remake of Speak No Evil. Jon Harris was also the editor on The Descent for Neil Marshall so not only did he know this world and characters, but that movie has incredible edits. One of the original script ideas was to flip the original idea on its head and have 6 male journalism students go into the same cave to investigate what happened to the women on their trip. This changed quite a bit and even though Marshall doesn’t have any credits in the creative process, it seems like he helped shape what the story eventually became. Sarah makes it out of the ordeal, picking a definitive ending of the two for the original, and the local police make her go back down into the caves to show them what happened to her and find any survivors.

Of course, they do find survivors but not the ones they want and the group, which includes 3 cave divers, two officers, and Sarah, run afoul of the cave dwellers again after coming down through a mine shaft with the help of a local man. The movie follows a very similar path with nightmares, hallucinations, cave ins, misdirection, and sudden bursts of violence. While this is a little bit derivative of the first one, the movie has more going for it than I think a lot of people are willing to give it credit for. The original cast of exploring women friends was originally supposed to come back in the form of hallucinations, ghosts, and flashbacks but during production it was decided to use them to expand the videos found on the video cameras left in the cave. This works and we also see the bodies in some cases where they were killed that adds to the lived in feel of the original. Therin lies probably my biggest problem with The Descent Part 2.

Let’s look at the bad first. While there were only 18 cave sets built for the first movie, a total of 30 are here for part two and they look great… until they don’t. There are a couple scenes where it stands out badly both technically and practically. While its not as obvious as some of the puppet master movies using the same damn hallway over and over again it still is noticeable in a way the first one isn’t with fewer options no less. On top of that, there are a couple scenes where it’s clear that there are some digital effects at play. Whether or not these could have been cleared up, it stands out like a sore thumb.

The cast is also just not as compelling as the first movie. While Shauna Macdonald comes back as Sarah and is great, the rest just feel like meat to be eaten and don’t resonate with the viewer nearly as much as the group of close-knit friends do in the first one. Macdonald has never been better than the first movie but check out Filth with James McAvoy to see another great, albeit non horror, performance. Krysten Cummings, Gavan O’Herlihy, Douglas Hodge, Josh Dallas, and Anna Skellern round out the rest of the cast. This was Skellern’s first movie and while she doesn’t have anything else big to her name, she appears in what looks like a ton of straight to video horror. This was an early role for Josh Dallas, but he would go on to appear in Marvel’s Thor and make it big on TV as Prince Charming in Once Upon a Time and Ben from Manifest. Hodge is a wonderful English actor who was in Penny Dreadful for a bit and was recently Alfred in Joker, not the new bad sequel. Krystal Cummings only has 2 other credits to her name and Gavan O’Herlihy is the son of Robocop and Halloween III great Dan O’Herlihy. This was his last role, but his career was more varied than you remember with roles alongside Superman and James Bond to name a few.

While everyone apart from Macdonald is underwhelming, this could also be due to the abundance of writers. As I said earlier, Marshall declined to come back in a creative role, so they replaced him with three writers in James McCarthy, J Blakeson, and James Watkins. The team of triple J has a small but interesting list of credits between them. Blakeson wrote and directed the underrated thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed while Watkins has had the largest impact, directing Eden Lake, Woman in Black, and most recently Speak No Evil. Man, this episode has James McAvoy sneaking in a ton. While this would be the only directorial credit for Harris, he does a fine job and also edited his own work which helps. Other than the previously mentioned grievances with acting and some effects, the biggest issue is that this movie is a sequel to The Descent. That’s the whole reason that Marshall didn’t want to return in the first place.

You know what? He isn’t wrong. I think this movie would have been more compelling not as a sequel but as a standalone where maybe we didn’t see what happened to these women in the first place. What if their bodies were found and we didn’t get a full explanation or only were shown what could be found on the tapes? It would have given back the mystery and luster that made the original so enthralling and scary. Taken as is though it still works. The practical gore effects look great from the bodies found and rats crawling out of orifices to throats getting torn out and hands getting cut off. It’s suitably gross almost in a way that wasn’t offered previously. The new creatures are also more detailed and more disgusting while also showing us female versions explaining how they remain a population as well as child ones and a hulking chieftain of sorts. While the movie follows a lot of the same beats for the first one, it also has a couple stand out scenes with my favorite being a tight tunnel game of chicken where Sarah takes out a crawler barreling towards her while escaping into a hole.

The first movie made 57 million on a 3 and a half million-dollar budget with great audience scores and even better critical praise but this movie only made 7 million in its limited release and I cant find its budget. It just came out at the wrong time and maybe had the wrong idea. It negates a great original ending while also waiting an odd amount of time to be released. Not soon enough to really go after the crowds that adored the original and not long enough to have proper nostalgia for a revisit. The Descent Part 2 sits in a rather lost position in horror with its timing being around mostly forgotten entries flooded with remakes, sequels, and original fare that just fell flat.

While it may not be the best movie ever, an obvious statement if there ever was one, it overcomes a lot of its missteps to be worth your time. The sameness of the original, dumb ending, questionable effects at times don’t wipe away the good gore, fun creatures, and great central performance. If you have been avoiding it or let your memories spoil the experience its high time you strapped a flashlight to your helmet and jumped back into the cave to see what you’ve been missing.

A couple of the previous episodes of The Black Sheep can be seen at the bottom of this article. To see more, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!