The Descent was a great and original horror movie made back in 2005 directed by Neil Marshall. It never needed a sequel but Jon Harris decided that he’d made one anyway and I’m pleased to report it’s not too bad. It’s not as good as the original movie but probably was never going to be as the originality was what made the first one so good.

The Descent: Part 2 stars Michael J. Reynolds, Shauna Macdonald, Jessika Williams, Douglas Hodge, Joshua Dallas, Anna Skellern and is set back in the same caves as the first movie where we see the search and rescue team hunting to find the 5 girls who went missing in the first movie. You might remember that at the end the lone survivor is seen running up to a car caked in blood.

We find out at the beginning of part 2 that she has lost her memory and it’s decided that the only way to get her to jog her memory is to take her back down into the caves again!! Obviously this isn’t a good idea considering the darkness and creepy crawley bad guys lurking!

The Descent: Part 2 isn’t too bad a movie. Being stuck down in a claustrophobic hole isn’t my idea of fun (Em and I found this out when doing a caving trip courtesy of Pathe which you can see here). That said, the idea of the movie being claustrophobic is entirely intentional and is executed extremely well. Filing a movie like this one must have been very difficult for Harris and he has to be commended for the way in which it was shot.

Some of the acting was a bit ropey and some of the dialogue the same but if you like a good horror movie and want to find out what happened to the ladies in The Descent, then this is most definitely worth a watch, but i warn you, don’t get too attached to any characters as they may not live to see the light of day.

The Descent: Part 2 is relesed on DVD and Blu Ray 12th April.

In 2005 Neil Marshall’s imagine-if-Alien-were-set-in-a-cave feature The Descent scared the living daylights out of cinemagoers worldwide.  Lacking the bawdy humour of his werewolf masterpiece Dog Soldiers, it was nevertheless an honest to goodness horror film that pulled no punches and left no survivors.  Unless you watched the American cut.

The folk who decided to make The Descent: Part 2 clearly fall into the latter camp as they have picked up just before we left off with Sarah being kind of…alive.  For those among you who have never seen The Descent there is a brief recap after the jump:

Six girls go caving

Things go bump in the dark

Some of the girls die

Some of the girls kill some of the creatures

All of the girls die

The action picks up two days after the events of the first film (with Descent editor Jon Harris at the helm), the six girls have now been reported missing.  Ass-kicking husband-thief Juno, it transpires, is the niece of a state senator ““ cue choppers, search and rescue teams and bumbling local law enforcement.  And a welcome reprise of the sweeping aerial shots of the Appalachians accompanied by David Julyan’s heartstring twanging score.  While the search and rescue team are busy not packing very much of the essential equipment needed to search for and rescue people, Sheriff Vaines (Gavan O’Herlihy) learns that one of the girls has emerged alive.  Immediately suspicious about the dreadful plot device of her apparent amnesia he takes the radical step of forcing her to return to the caves to retrace her steps and recover the missing girls.  Partner Rios (Krysten Cummings) is horrified by the plan but her protests fall on deaf ears and she reluctantly joins the suicide mission.

Sarah was picked up bloodied and confused by a local who remembers talk from the old days about local mines leading to an unmapped cave system.  When the cavers break through their initial excitement turns to trepidation and then carnage as Sarah’s memory begins to return and the crawlers come out to play…

Acting as executive producer for The Descent: Part 2, Neil Marshall’s only hands-on role was as director of some flashback footage featuring the original cast.  It is a pity because something important has been lost here ““ the whole spirit and glee of the first film are gone ““ replaced by the trite and the downright nonsensical.  I had the impression that the lack of confidence Jon Harris displayed presenting the film at Frightfest had somehow spilled onto screen.  There is no identity here, only a well-trodden trudge over familiar ground towards an inevitable sequel.

Eden Lake‘s James Watkins was brought on board as a writer and a supplementary ending was added after filming wrapped but I fear the damage was already done.  Had co-writers James McCarthy and J Blakeson had the experience, or the cojones, to play it dead straight they could perhaps have pulled off cliché.  Drag Me to Hell managed this feat with panache.  But the script dithers with contradiction, toilet humour and tired dialogue.  In good bad-horror style you are left waiting for the dying to begin and that is where things dramatically improve.  The Crawlers are impressively tenacious bad guys and it is eminently satisfying to watch them meet a sticky end.  And the endings are darned sticky!

The Descent: Part 2 is probably not a film for lovers of…good films.  What it is is a very entertaining splatter fest for lovers of gore.  There is lashings of the stuff; entrails, shattered skulls, rotten corpse swings (oh yes!) and blood by the barrel load.  It is a stomach-churning spectacle and potentially the reason the film may succeed.  I took a second opinion with me to a recent screening and she made a very good point ““ it is a sleepover movie, a film you watch among a stack of others to scare you awake in the dark of the night.  It’s a film you see with a huge gang of friends who will shield you with their popcorn, make you jump and hide out in your winter coat while you laugh at one another’s reactions and swear never ever to watch anything as horrible again.

The claustrophobia of the original is almost entirely absent and the cramped caves feel bright and spacious since the cast are no longer self-lit.  Sheriff Vaines appears to be wandering around in an entirely different cave system as he rarely has to stoop.  The effective half light we once shuddered to see the crawlers scuttle through has gone – to the detriment of their appearance.  I’m fairly sure one of them was Clem from Buffy and another meandered off screen like a builder on a fag break – not very scary boys.

There are stand-out moments in spite of this and one scene in particular had me vertiginous with fear.  Elen Rios loses Sarah in a flooded chamber as they try to follow the flow of water to the exit Sarah first escaped by.  She has inches of breathing space and her helmet thuds against the cavern roof obscuring her vision and her hearing.  The only sound is the shudder of her jagged breath as she tries to stay calm and quiet – truly affecting and utterly terrifying.  There is well-pitched tension too in the stalking of a trapped rescuer (they are the worst rescue team in the history of cinema!) and the return of another familiar face.

At the film’s Frightfest premiere Shauna Macdonald confessed that her return was due, in part, to the control she was able to have over her role.  For this reason the character of Sarah is untainted by the facile script and plot.  There are, perhaps, one too many visual Carrie references but her resemblance to Sissy Spacek is uncanny.  She also pleaded for the audience to be kind to Jon Harris – a feat which, I fear, may prove impossible.  However, this was a mammoth production to undertake for a debut director and a brave step for a man already hugely successful in his own field.  The Descent: Part 2 may not linger long in our memories but it will make tens of thousands of teens very happy.  Far from the worst film you could see this year, it would make an ideal date night movie for a giggle and I can’t think of a better excuse to hold hands!

The Descent: Part 2 released December 4^th (previews 2^nd & 3^rd)

For an exclusive clip click here or the one below!

© 2009 Pathé

The Descent Part 2 has been described as ‘The Feel Sh*t Scared Film of the Decade‘ for a reason and when you see this clip you might start to understand why!

Pathé / Warner Bros Pictures UK have been kind enough to give us an exclusive clip for their latest movie, The Descent Part 2 which is released in cinemas December 4th (with previews on the 2nd & 3rd December). As you’ll see from the clip below, the movie takes you back underground where monsters can be lurking and where the most claustrophobic movie of all time is back for another round!

Synopsis: Shauna Macdonald (Mutant Chronicles, The Descent) returns as Sarah, continuing the story of 2005′s hugely successful horror thriller The Descent, in which a group of young women disappear during a caving trip in the Appalachian Mountains.

Emerging from the cave system alone, distraught and covered in the blood of her missing companions, Sarah is incoherent and half-wild with fear. Sceptical about her account of events and convinced Sarah’s psychosis hides far darker secrets, Sheriff Vaines (Gavan O’Herlihy) doesn’t waste time. Along with his partner Rios (Krysten Cummings), and their cave rescue team Dan (Douglas Hodge), Greg (Joshua Dallas), and Cath (Anna Skellern), Vaines forces Sarah back into the caves to help the rescuers find her friends.

Alongside Macdonald, The Descent: Part 2 also features Natalie Mendoza reprising her role as Juno.  Krysten Cummings, Anna Skellern, Gavan O’Herlihy (Seven Days of Grace), Joshua Dallas (Ghost Machine, “Doctor Who”) and Douglas Hodge (Mansfield Park) also star.

The Descent: Part 2 is written by James McCarthy, J. Blakeson and James Watkins (Eden Lake). The film is produced by Academy Award® winner Christian Colson (Slumdog Millionaire) and Ivana Mackinnon (The Scouting Book for Boys). Neil Marshall who directed the original film serves as executive producer with Paul Smith (The Descent, Slumdog Millionaire).  Previously a well-known editor on films including Kick-Ass, Eden Lake, Stardust and Layer Cake, as well as The Descent; Jon Harris makes his debut as director.

You can find out more about the movie on the official Descent Part two website: http://www.thedescent2.co.uk/

You can buy The Descent (Part I) on DVD and Blu Ray if you either need a catch up or want to watch the original before heading to the cinema. Next week, HeyUGuys blogger, Em will be bringing you her review of the movie plus interviews with director, Jon Harris and you can also find out what happens when HeyUGuys takes a trip caving with Pathé and some other unsuspecting movie journalists!

© 2009 Pathé

We were lucky enough to see Descent Part 2 at the World Premiere during Frightfest a month or so ago. It’s not out until 4th December so we’ve still got an age before we can post our review but keep your eyes peeled.

The Descent Part 2 stars Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Krysten Cummings, Anna Skellern, Gavan O’Herlihy (Seven Days of Grace), Joshua Dallas (Ghost Machine, “Doctor Who”) and Douglas Hodge (Mansfield Park).

In the meantime, we have this new Japanese poster (click it to enlarge) which basically sums up the film in one image. It has a lady looking scared, a monster’s face and she’s in a pothole. What else could you want?!

If you want to read our report from the premiere you can check it out here and you can check out the trailer here.

According to this new trailer, ‘Critics called Descent, the most terrifying monster movie since Alien’. The caption then says ‘The Daily Star‘ in very small letters. I’m not sure the ‘Daily Star’ speak for all film critics but they got their name on a trailer so good for them! The original Descent for me was a good movie in that it kept me entertained for the 99 minutes in which it ran and had a storyline that we’d not seen before – something which is becoming increasingly rare.
The Descent Part 2 is directed by Jon Harris and stars Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Krysten Cummings, Anna Skellern and Gavan O’Herlihy. The movie premiered at Frightfest last weekend and is HeyUGuys were lucky enough to be there and our review of the evening is here. Our review of the movie itself will follow in the not too distant future. The second installment is due for release in the UK December 4th. Read on for the synopsis and trailer.

Shauna Macdonald (Mutant Chronicles, The Descent) returns as Sarah, continuing the story of 2005′s hugely successful horror thriller The Descent, in which a group of young women disappear during a caving trip in the Appalachian Mountains.

Emerging from the cave system alone, distraught and covered in the blood of her missing companions, Sarah is incoherent and half-wild with fear. Sceptical about her account of events and convinced Sarah’s psychosis hides far darker secrets, Sheriff Vaines (Gavan O’Herlihy) doesn’t waste time. Along with his partner Rios (Krysten Cummings), and their cave rescue team Dan (Douglas Hodge), Greg (Joshua Dallas), and Cath (Anna Skellern), Vaines forces Sarah back into the caves to help the rescuers find her friends.

Alongside Macdonald, The Descent: Part 2 also features Natalie Mendoza reprising her role as Juno. Krysten Cummings, Anna Skellern, Gavan O’Herlihy (Seven Days of Grace), Joshua Dallas (Ghost Machine, “Doctor Who”) and Douglas Hodge (Mansfield Park) also star.

The Descent: Part 2 is written by James McCarthy, J. Blakeson and James Watkins (Eden Lake). The film is produced by Academy Award® winner Christian Colson (Slumdog Millionaire) and Ivana Mackinnon (The Scouting Book for Boys). Neil Marshall who directed the original film serves as executive producer with Paul Smith (The Descent, Slumdog Millionaire). Previously a well-known editor on films including Kick-Ass, Eden Lake, Stardust and Layer Cake, as well as The Descent; Jon Harris makes his debut as director.

HeyUGuys have just returned from Frightfest at London’s Leicester Square where we enjoyed the world premiere of The Descent: Part 2. What can we tell you about the sequel to Neil Marshall’s 2005 gorestravaganza?

Erm”¦nothing, we’re not allowed, but before you cross us off your Christmas card list forever we have a few titbits from the night to whet your appetite until the December 4th UK release. And we promise to share our full and frank review before the film hits screens.

Though Neil Marshall is onboard as executive producer, the director’s mantle was on this occasion passed to Jon Harris who acted as editor for the first film. Jon’s previous editorial work includes Layer Cake, Snatch and Stardust but The Descent: Part 2 is his first directorial role.

Co-star Michael J Reynolds spoke to HeyUGuys about how impressed he was with the debut director, saying his experience as an editor had given him a unique understanding of the importance of building tension. Reynolds told us that he had complete faith in Jon and jumped at the chance to return after filming wrapped and shoot a “˜twist’ to the plot that wasn’t present in the original script.

Before the screening the cast sang Jon Harris’ praises with a plea from star Shauna Macdonald that the film be given a fair chance because “Jon is as good as Neil and, just might be better”. Both the returning actresses spoke about their reluctance to return unless the material was right and Shauna in particular said she had had input into the script at a very early stage. Of her experience on the original, Shauna said: “I was 23 for the first movie, it was all girls together and we had the best time!” and, though she wasn’t born until 1981, she later admitted to HUG that her favourite 80′s movie is Dirty Dancing. We didn’t have the heart to tell her about the remake.

After the screening, we asked Shauna Macdonald and new cast member Anna Skellern to pose for a photo. Jon Harris was kindly lingering and we captured him signing posters for enthusiastic Frightfest fans. It being something of a tradition here at HeyUGuys we posed the “˜What’s your favourite 80′s movie?’ question. His reply: The Breakfast Club.

Jon Harris, a man of taste and discernment! Does his discerning eye translate to screen? We’ll let you know in December”¦