Movie News
Descent Heads Back Into the Cave
Posted by Cole Abaius (cole.abaius@filmschoolrejects.com) on May 2, 2008
I’ll admit that the girlish (yet manly) scream you heard when Descent hit theaters was probably me. I had the pleasure of seeing it at Butt-Numb-a-Thon 7 in the company of the ideal movie-going audience, and even they were surprised by how high-pitched I could be.
I’m gearing up to embarrass myself again, because The Hollywood Reporter is Hollywood reporting that a sequel to the subterranean blood bath is belaying its way down into theaters.
The original had two endings (depending on whether you saw it in the US or the UK), and both were made with sequels in mind. In the US version, Sarah, the lone survivor, climbs out of the cave and speeds off in her car only to have that last scare come via her friend Juno’s ghost in the passenger seat. In the UK version, her scare causes her to wake up - realizing she’s back inside the cave and only hallucinated her escape.
Either way, Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) has to head back into the darkness to rescue her friends in the upcoming sequel, a task I wouldn’t wish on anyone (real or fictional).
I’m hoping they treat this one as the mirror image of the first. Instead of having the first half be a Lifetime Movie of the Week that turns into a nightmarish Hell-world where sightless demons gnaw at you, the second film should feature Sarah bravely rescuing the few remaining ladies through great peril during the first half followed by all of them escaping and talking about how the experience made them feel over warm cups of General Foods International Coffees. The painful experience will give way to giggles, segue into a discussion on how men never call back, and completely lose focus as they reminisce about Jean Luc - the handsome French bartender they met on vacation that one time.
That way, both story arcs are bound to be terrifying.
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5 Comments
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I screamed, jumped, and wet my knickers during the original Descent… I don’t expect to do at least two of those during the sequel. I won’t ask why they’re making a sequel ($$$), but I gotta ask who exactly is Sarah heading back in there to save? Her friends are all dead, eaten, digested, and excreted by now… with the possible exception of Juno (the fine Natalie Mendoza)… who I don’t really see her going back to save.
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
You’re right in hinting pretty loudly that money is the reason. The original was made for $10 mil and grossed something like $57 mil. Pretty nice cash, especially for an indie outfit. The sequel’s budget is $10 mil again, and I think they could draw in a fairly solid amount.
I think the sequel could still be done well. Not everyone’s dead. Plus, they have to up the ante somehow. Let’s hope she leads some of those crawlers out of the cave.
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
What the hell? Is she going back to retrieve their corpses or something? Or are we suppose to forget that we watched each of them die?
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Cole, the only one we never saw die (though we heard her death off screen) was Juno, who she left to die, why would she go back to rescue her?
May 5th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Scariest movie in a long time