Booze Talkin #20
Oct. 28, 2009
The Descent: Part 2 Shouldn't Be Allowed to Exist
BEWARE SPOILERS FOR BOTH DESCENT FILMS BELOW!
It's pretty rare these days to watch a horror film and instantly consider it a masterpiece. In fact, over the past 10-plus years, there's only one film I feel fits into that elite description: THE DESCENT. What's even more rare is finding one of these films that doesn't eventually succumb to the onslaught of sub-par sequels, prequels, and spin-offs. How THE THING has lasted this long is a glorious mystery to me (be warned however, the prequel talks are heating up). Again though, I thought THE DESCENT was determined to hold it's own and end up being one of the greatest one-shot horror films of all time. Until someone thought they should go back to the cave.
I specifically wanted to start with that poster above because I feel it sets a tone for the state of mind I'm in while writing this. On the official lameness scale, 1 being cool as shit and 100 being stupid as fuck, that thing scores a solid 80 points. Even if I knew what being "shit scared" meant, the weak blend of promotional photos we'd already seen weeks prior and some red highlights seriously lacks the effort and originality of the first film's one-sheet. My first impression of a film should not feel fan made.
Who cares about the poster though, what really matters is plot. And right off the hop, this film has decided to ignore the perfection of the original ending of the first film and follow the shitty USA version. Not a good start. Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) is still alive (55 points) and out of the caves (75 points). However, she has no recollection of the events in the first film (90 points) and decides to go back in to find her girlfriends. New friends - exact same scenario. Oh yeah, and Juno (Natalie Mendoza) is supposedly still alive (95 points). The producers declare they won't be rehashing the first film. I declare shenanigans.
There's no way this film should be allowed to use an alternate ending as it's starting point. That's just plain cheating. It's like digging up the old footage of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly and making a new BACK TO THE FUTURE film with him because of it. North Americans didn't deserve the horribly cliche ending that was pushed down our throats. And now, the rest of the world doesn't deserve to be forced to accept it. All of that horrific greatness, the feel of dread, the unavoidable blood-soaked final stand, and a fantastic character's chance of going out with any honor is pushed aside because Sarah accidentlly stumbles out of the darkness so we can do it all over again. Super. Duper. Lame.
Maybe it's the booze talking but I choose to remember the good old days when everybody in that picture above was slaughtered. It doesn't even matter how good the sequel is - it's already made a perfect film worse by simply existing.
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10:50PM on 10/29/2009