The Descent Part 2

The Descent Part 2 is a 2009 British adventure horror film and sequel to the 2005 horror film The Descent. It was directed by Jon Harris from a screenplay by James McCarthy, J Blakeson, and James Watkins. The film was produced by Christian Colson and Ivana MacKinnon; Neil Marshall, the writer and director of the original, was an executive producer. Shot in London and Surrey, it was released in cinemas in the UK on 2 December 2009 and on DVD on 27 April 2010 in the U.S.

This article is about the film. For the unrelated video game, see Descent II. For the two-part Star Trek episode, see Descent (Star Trek: The Next Generation).

The Descent Part 2
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJon Harris
Produced byChristian Colson
Ivana MacKinnon
Screenplay byJames McCarthy
J Blakeson
James Watkins
StarringShauna Macdonald
Natalie Mendoza
Douglas Hodge
Krysten Cummings
Gavan O'Herlihy
Josh Dallas
Anna Skellern
Music byDavid Julyan
CinematographySam McCurdy
Edited byJon Harris
Production
company
Distributed byWarner Bros. UK (Pathé)
Release date
  • 24 August 2009 (2009-08-24) (Fantasy Filmfest)
  • 2 December 2009 (2009-12-02) (United Kingdom)
Running time
93 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget$6.2 million
Box office$7 million[1]

Plot

Two days after the events of the first film, a traumatized and blood-covered Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) escapes the cave with no memory of the events. She's taken to a hospital, where it's found that some of the blood on her is the same blood type as Juno Kaplan (Natalie Mendoza), one of the missing friends. Sheriff Vaines (Gavan O'Herlihy) takes his Deputy, Elen Rios (Krysten Cummings), amnesiac Sarah, and 3 potholing cave specialists assigned as the rescue team: Dan (Douglas Hodge), Greg (Josh Dallas), and Cath (Anna Skellern) – to the cave to find the missing women. The team members are sent down via an old mine shaft operated by the old, mysterious Ed Oswald (Michael J. Reynolds).

The group discovers Rebecca's mutilated body near the entrance, causing Sarah to have flashbacks from before escaping and causing Vaines to believe she could be responsible for the previous disappearances. While crawling through a tunnel, Sarah suddenly attacks Vaines and Greg, causing an angry Vaines to split-up in search of her. In the process he's surprised by a crawler and fires his gun in a panic, creating minor collapses in the cavern and trapping Cath, separating her from the remaining group. They decide to find an alternate way around in order to try to free Cath and arrive in a room full of bones, finding Holly's damaged video camera among the debris. They watch it and realize the women were attacked by the crawlers, foreshadowing that they themselves are attacked and now completely separated.

A panicked Rios starts calling for help, alerting the crawlers to her location, but is rescued by Sarah. The two then watch and wait as a crawler kills Dan and drags his body away, prompting Sarah to inform Rios that the crawlers are blind and hunt via sound. After escaping from and killing a crawler, Cath escapes her confinement and runs into Greg, right before they escape from another crawler and find Sam's body dangling in the air by her climbing gear. They decide to use her body to swing across a chasm, but are attacked again. Greg sacrifices himself to buy time for Cath, but she breaks down and ultimately does not survive.

Rios reveals to Sarah that she has a daughter after Sarah tells her that she had been washed out of the cave through a water system last time. Elsewhere, Vaines is attacked by a crawler but saved by Juno, who's alive and now adept at hunting the crawlers. They soon reunite with Rios and Sarah, both shocked to see Juno alive. Sparks fly as Juno is furious that Sarah left her to die after shanking her in the leg with the pickaxe. Juno almost kills her but calms down after Rios lies about how Sarah brought them to find her voluntarily. Juno then leads them to a feeding pit, which she claims has a passage to the surface that the crawlers use to gather food from above ground. Vaines handcuffs Sarah to himself so that she won't abandon them like she did Juno. When he falls over a ledge, he almost drags Sarah down with him. As crawlers approach them, Juno orders Rios to cut off Vaines' hand to save Sarah. Despite his protests, she does so, causing Vaines and the crawlers, now latched onto him, to fall to their death.

Sarah, Juno, and Rios reach the exit, but are blocked by a group of crawlers, led by their large leader. They try to quietly sneak past the crawlers, but Greg, who's dying from his injuries, appears and grabs Juno's leg in a last effort to save himself. This causes her to scream in surprise and attract the attention of the crawlers. Greg dies and the women are left to fight once again. After all of the crawlers are killed, Sarah tries to rescue Juno from the leader, but it slashes Juno's stomach, mortally wounding her. Sarah then kills it before Juno dies in her arms. More crawlers arrive, but Sarah draws their attention to herself by screaming, giving Rios a chance to escape.

As Sarah is presumably killed, Rios escapes from the possible cave entrance. When she tries to call for help, she is attacked by Ed with a shovel, who drags her back to the cave opening as food for the crawlers. As Rios slowly regains consciousness, a blood-covered crawler pops out with arms outstretched.

Cast

Production

Due to the first film being a commercial and critical success, its decided that a sequel would be produced. While Neil Marshall would not direct the film, he was assigned to oversee its production as an executive producer.[2]

Marshall received the first draft of the film in late July 2006, with no directors or cast in mind. He made it clear that he intended to incorporate more of the feeling of claustrophobia like that of a particular scene in the previous film. Marshall tells Bloody-Disgusting.com about new ideas for the film, "The monsters they can deal with, and a bit of the claustrophobia, they can deal with, but the combination is definitely something we want to incorporate that into the sequel, by putting the monster and the girls in a really tight spot."[2] Jon Harris, the editor of the first film, was brought on to direct and edit the sequel. It is his only directing credit as of 2019.

When The Descent was released in 2006 Lionsgate, the distributor, edited out the last minute of the film, changing the ending. When Dreadcentral.com asked Marshall which of the film's two endings the sequel would be picking up after, he said that it wouldn't be announced until he approved a script.

Filming began in May 2008 at Ealing Studios in London. Ealing Studios was featured on BBC London in June 2008 going behind the scenes of the filming of 'Part 2'. In that broadcast its confirmed that Shauna MacDonald would be returning to play her character Sarah and that most of the other original cast members would return, some in flashbacks and possible hallucinations. The film was shot on all 3 of the main stages at Ealing Studios[3] and some scenes were filmed on location at the Bourne Woods near Farnham in southwest Surrey, England. Part 2 consisted of making 30 caves for the film while the first film only had 18 practical cave sets made.[4]

The production designer was Simon Bowles, who designed the original film, with Mark Scruton as supervising art director. The sets were built by DRS Construction[5] and Armordillo[6] The film used elaborate sets, miniatures, and blue screen digital images. This was revealed on BBC London's behind the scenes look. The VFX and digital set extensions were created by Swedish VFX company Filmgate.[7]

Release

The film was originally set to be released by Pathé in May 2009, but was delayed. It was released in France on 14 October, Japan on 7 November and Argentina on 19 November.[8] It was released in UK cinemas on 4 December 2009.[9] The film did not reach its expectation in the UK debuting at No. 9[10] making the first week domestic gross £313,739.[11] Total gross in the UK stands at £674,550.[12] In France the film has proven successful reaching No. 5 and grossing $1,097,535[13] in its opening weekend. Total gross in France now stands at $2,438,834.[14] After calculating the film's box office performance and DVD sales it earned roughly 25% of The Descent's final gross.[15]

Despite doing average business at the box office, the film fared much better with DVD sales, making over $7 million in the US alone.[16] The US release date for The Descent: Part 2 was announced by the Weinstein Company on 12 February 2010 and was set for 27 April 2010, as a straight to DVD release through Lionsgate Home Entertainment.[17] During its first week of release, it sold 46,000 units, with a gross of $982,000.[16][18]

Reception

The Descent Part 2 garnered mixed reviews. Tim Robey of The Telegraph gave the film 3/5 stars stating, "Though it stretches credulity...The last half-hour is a tense team scramble to get out, and stay out, but the best move in this above-par shocker is digging right back into the claustrophobic emotional traumas which made Part One so thrilling."[19]

Variety gave the film a mixed review stating, "Treading closely in the steps of its predecessor in every sense, the sequel has less emotional nuance, shows more of the monsters and opts this time for a less-interesting coed cast instead of the all-femme crew used so effectively in the original. Nevertheless, as popcorn entertainment, it delivers, and should satisfy fans on all platforms."[20]

As of June 2020, the film holds a 55% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 38 reviews with an average rating 5.07/10. The website's critical consensus states, "The Descent 2 goes spelunking for its predecessors' unnerving power but never digs beyond surface chills, although this efficient splatterfest contains enough nasty set pieces to sate the gore-prone." [21]

gollark: You can have that. There is an annoyingly long wait for requests for access to be approved but I know some people with API access.
gollark: Good luck running a 175-billion-parameter model anyway.
gollark: The biggest GPT-3 model has 175 billion parameters. The GPT-J one is 6 billion. So still a big difference but not quite that much.
gollark: GPT-Neo/GPT-J.
gollark: There are open replications of smaller GPT-3s available.

References
  1. "The Descent: Part 2 (2009)". Boxofficemojo.com. Archived from the original on 21 January 2019. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  2. "Exclusive: Marshall on Zombie Sex, Descent 2 and More!!". Bloody-Disgusting.com. Archived from the original on 15 January 2015.
  3. Archived 12 May 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  4. "Ready to Descend Again?". Dreadcentral.com. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  5. "DRS Construction Set design and construction for film, television and still photography in the UK and mainland Europe". Drsconstruction.com. Archived from the original on 20 January 2002. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  6. "enter the world of armordillo". Armordillo.co.uk. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  7. "Filmgate - Visual Effects - Grading - Conforming - Post Production - Digital Intermediate Consulting". Filmgate.se. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  8. "Release dates for The Descent: Part 2 (2009)". IMDb.com. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  9. "Second Clip From 'The Descent: Part 2', New Stills". BloodyDisgusting. Archived from the original on 15 September 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  10. "UK Box Office Chart - From". Mymovies.net. 13 November 2012. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  11. "UK Box Office: 4 - 6 December 2009". UK Film Council. Archived from the original on 6 January 2012. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  12. "UK Box Office: 8 - 10 January 2010". UK Film Council. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  13. "France Box Office, October 14-18, 2009". Boxofficemojo.com. Archived from the original on 6 October 2018. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  14. "The Descent: Part 2 (2009)". 174.129.253.143. Archived from the original on 3 July 2011. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  15. "The Descent (2006)". Box Office Mojo. 12 October 2006. Archived from the original on 2 November 2012. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  16. "Movie The Descent: Part 2 - DVD Sales". The Numbers. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  17. "DVD Trailer for Lionsgate's 'The Descent: Part 2'". BloodyDisgusting. Archived from the original on 22 July 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  18. "The Numbers News - DVD Sales: New Releases Fail to Overtake Avatar". The-numbers.com. 12 May 2010. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  19. Film Reviews. "The Descent 2, review". Telegraph. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
  20. Felperin, Leslie (16 May 2009). "The Descent: Part 2". Variety.
  21. "The Descent 2 (2009)". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 3 December 2017. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
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