THE DESCENT 2 Is Go

According to The Hollywood Reporter a sequel to Neil Marshall’s really rather brilliant spelunker horror movie The Descent has been not only given the greenlight, but plot details and casting have emerged. And it probably won’t make sense to anyone apart from the Americans! But I’ll warn you now, if you still haven’t seen The Descent then stop reading this, go down your local video store and get yourself a copy as I am going to end up spoiling it for you!

Right, so this is what The Hollywood Reporter had to say about the plot:

The script sees the survivor forced back into the system of caves she battled her way out of in the first film, in a bid to locate the rest of her group

Arrow In The Head clarifies this a little bit with a slightly expanded version:

THE DESCENT 2 centers on Sarah (MacDonald), who emerges alone from a cave system following an expedition with her five friends in the Appalachian mountains. Distraught, injured and covered in the blood of her missing companions, Sarah is incoherent and half-wild with fear. Skeptical about her account of events and convinced Sarah’s psychosis hides far darker secrets, Sheriff Vaines forces her back into the caves with a search party to help locate the rest of the group. Trapped by falling rocks, the party gets driven deep into the caverns, and as one by one the fate of the missing girls is revealed, Sarah is forced to confront her deepest fears.

OK, so you got that? Right then, so the news that Shauna MacDonald is reprising her role as Sarah isn’t going to surprise you that much but how about Natalie Jackson Mendoza as Juno? Personally speaking, from the viewpoint of someone who watched the UK version of the movie as opposed to the American version I find this a little bit confusing!

If you need reminding, Juno was seemingly left for dead by Sarah after she stabbed her in the leg and the movie itself ended with Sarah seemingly going crazy in the pitch black tunnels surrounded by the creatures. So how the hell are the pair of them in the sequel? Are we assuming then that the sequel will instead be continuing from the American version which had the “upbeat” ending with Sarah managing to escape? If this is the case then I am severely disappointed as one of the best things about The Descent was it’s decidedly downbeat ending!

Also, Neil Marshall won’t be returning to the directors chair but he will be involved as a producer. The director is going to be the original movie’s editor, Jon Harris who will be working from a script by James Watkins (the guy who wrote the awful My Little Eye). Seriously, this doesn’t bode well for this sequel! I would much rather have seen just a rehash of the original movie or even just have had a group of rescuers going into the cave system to try and find the girls from the original. But no, we have to get some half assed idea going from an ending of a movie that only got shown in the USA!

[Via Empire & Arrow In The Head]

Posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm under Movie News by Gareth.
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