Tuesday 24 March 2015

DOUBLE REVIEW: The Descent (2005) / The Descent 2 (2009)

The Descent

IMDB rate: 7,3
Genre: Monster, Survival
Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid

I've seen this movies a couple of times already, and while I wasn't too crazy about it at first, I must say that it started to grow on me. It's quite a decent horror movie, even though I thought most of the movie was too dark, the girls were too loud and stuff like that. But besides that, it's quite a nice movie. Scary as well ;).


After a tragic accident, six friends reunite for a caving expedition. Their adventure soon goes horribly wrong when a collapse traps them deep underground and they find themselves  pursued by bloodthirsty creatures. As their friendships deteriorate, they find themselves in a desperate struggle to survive the creatures and each other.

The acting in the movie is decent but there was one person that bothered me endless; Saskia Mulder. She's from The Netherlands and she has a horrible english accent, which is very bothering I think. I also come from The Netherlands and I know from experience that almost everybody here has a horrible accent (of course not everybody, for example, Famke Janssen, Rutger Hauer and Carice van Houten). Not a big deal, but when hearing it in a movie it's very annoying.


What I also found annoying was the fact that three of the six females in this movie look a lot like each other, they are all blond and tall which makes it very hard to separate them from each other in a dark movie like this one. The movie itself is also quite confusing because it's in the dark, this is not the worst thing because it's logical in a movie like this. But when the main characters resemble each other a lot, it gets really difficult to follow.

The girls are really badass and it's a nice touch that the movie only contains girls. This makes it differ a lot from the standard movies. But the bad thing with a girl movie, girls scream a lot, they argue a lot and they have really high voices. A bit unpleasant at times.

The creatures are what I really liked in this movie. They are really scary. Especially the first time you see them clearly, it scared me shitless.


I think many people will like this movie, I personally did not enjoy it so much the first few times, but it isn't too bad. I thought the acting was decent with exception of one person. The monsters are really scary but the movie itself is kinda confusing sometimes. 

My personal rate: 6/10

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The Descent 2

IMDB rate: 5,8
Genre: Monster, Survival
Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Douglas Hodge

The Descent 2, while the first movie was reasonable I wasn't too much of a fan of this movie. It's unbelievable in many ways, the concept just isn't fresh anymore and well, it was just very annoying at moments. I did like it though when a familiar face showed up...


Distraught, confused, and half-wild with fear, Sarah Carter emerges alone from the Appalachian cave system where she encountered unspeakable terrors. Unable to plausibly explain to the authorities what happened - or why she's covered in her friends' blood - Sarah is forced back to the subterranean depths to help locate her five missing companions. As the rescue party drive deeper into uncharted caverns, nightmarish visions of the recent past begin to haunt Sarah and she starts to realize the full horror and futility of the mission. Subjected to the suspicion and mistrusts of the group and confronted once more by the inbred, feral and savagely ruthless Crawlers, Sarah must draw on all her inner reserves of strength and courage in a desperate final struggle for deliverance and redemption.

The movie is very unbelievable. It's plays two days after the previous movie and Sarah is found. They bring her to the hospital where she is in a huge shock and remembers nothing. Because the rest is trying to save the other girls Sarah is forced to go into the cave again with the rescuers. Here is where the unbelievable part starts, because a woman that's in shock because of a huge climbing accident is not able to go hiking once again, after two days. Not only is it unreal to take her back to the place of the accident that fast, it's also unreal because she's in a huge shock. Also, there are only 3 real hikers and two cops with her. No medical assistants for the case if they find someone alive, no weapons for defense (besides a gun, very smart in a cave). Also, they did not even interrogate Sarah, they immediately took her to the cave, while they did not know what happened in the cave. The girl could have killed everyone, and it might even be the case that they took a psychopath with them. 


A scene that I liked was when the mouse crawled out of Rebecca's mouth, it made her look alive. It's also cool that they used the same actress again. The special effects don't look as good as in the first movie, the creatures looked a bit different but that might be because of the lightning. But the creatures are still scary as fuck! There are definitely a lot more jump scares.

The plot is a bit useless, only a rescue action that goes wrong. You know exactly what will happen so it's very predictable. The sheriff is a very annoying character, who will handcuff someone in a cave? It's so unrealistic. Also a very light woman makes the rocks creak, who will ever come to the idea to walk over the rock with two people at the same time? The handcuffs are so useless and makes the movie very annoying.

The ending is a bit weak, it gives the option for another sequel which is definitely not necessary. 


Not an excellent movie. The first part is a lot better and this movie is very useless. The acting is not very special and there are some annoying characters in it. I don't recommend watching this movie, the first one is a lot better.

My personal rate: 4,5/10

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