The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
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Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
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Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (36) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (20) | Rotten (16) | DVD (5)
Harris's direction is messy, favouring confusing set-piece scares over the all-important group dynamics.
It's efficient, and workmanlike enough, but the spark of inspiration that won fans for the first film seems to me pretty much gone.
As popcorn entertainment, it delivers, and should satisfy fans on all platforms.
Appreciate the bonus 90 minutes you get to spend down in the caves with these terrifying monsters.
While cave-killings were engaging for an hour and a half the first movie, this time around I grew bored by about the hour mark.
All in all, serviceable, if unremarkable extras - befitting the film they come from.
Unfortunately for The Descent: Part 2, the loud jumps that did come weren't strong enough to shake me in any way, as, for the most part (like so much of the film), they were fairly well sign posted.
Overall The Descent: Part 2 is a major step down from the first film in almost every area, from the amount of scares to the effectiveness of the gore and even down to such things as the dialogue.
Thank the sequel for underscoring, in its devastating mediocrity, just how great and special the original was to start with.
Doesn't come close to the original, but still manages to entertain.
By the standards set up by its predecessor, it's a letdown, but by the overall standards of horror sequels, it's a complete success.
You can practically see the film trying to "color between the lines" laid down in the first film, but there's just enough freshness to keep Part 2 chugging along.
"Well, we've lost 5 women down a hole here in the Appalachias. Only one's returned, covered from head to toe in somebody else's blood, and she's got no memory. My plan: we clean her up and get her to lead another team down the same hole, ASAP, fresh blood if you will, and we look for the rest. Who's with me?" People wandering around in dark underground caves inhabited by mutant cave ghoulies and oops, their flashlight batteries go out! Wonder what happens next? Same genre, more fun.
Super Reviewer
[img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/user/icons/icon13.gif[/img] As a gleefully gory and totally nuts and bolts horror flick, Descent 2 is everything that it wants to be. But that's less than I can say for the fans of Neil Marshall's jaw dropping, heartbreaking original. Now i'm one of them, I am in love with The Descent. I still think it's one of the ultimate horror films of the 21st century if not a great example of pure character emotions manifested by brutal violence on screen. The sequel however is expectedly dull apart from the final 30 minutes in which it practices what every other horror flick ends up undertaking. Crank the volume up and splatter blood in our faces. The original film did a lot more than that. It made us endure claustrophobia which has only been done cinematically a small handful of times before. This time the surprise of the first one has dissapeared and the nail biting silence and enigmatical horror is therein replaced with gory set pieces and a larger appearance of crawling creatures than the last film. It is less imaginative in plotting and weaker directed than it's predecessor with one major difference which eventually counted for little change in the story anyway. The most unforgivable trait however is the weak, uninteresting group of characters which in the original were much more fleshed out, likable and much more vulnerable. The way they were defenseless made the original work. The Descent 2 fails in this sense. It's definitely not the worst sequel in the world of horror but I would never watch it again. The problem is not that it's extraordinarily free of merit, which it isn't. It's the lack of justification for it's existence that bothers me. It adds nothing to the legacy of the first one and simply deserves to be forgotten by true fans. If you're someoene who never saw the first one and the various shots that it boasted which inspired such great awe, you'll see more in this follow up than the rest of us should. It doesn't help at all that it features a less than radical conclusion to the overwhelming story of hope, suffering and regret which was it's forerunner.
This is going to be the christmas movie of 2009 .......lol can t wait till it opens on the 2nd dec...... A desent horror insend of the over hype new moon!!!
When it comes to sequels to truly original films this here does a lot of things right. It starts right where the first one ended and picks up all the loose threats, including some you considered tightly bound. By using the same soundtrack, you feel as if you are watching a story that continues, not an unnecessary add on. You gotta give the creators credit for that. This also entails a problem, of course. The film has little to add we didn't already see (better and scarier) in the first, but tries to top in the gore department instead. That goes a little far at times. The original was also smart enough to show as little of the creatures as possible, with as little lighting as absolutely necessary. Neither is the case here, sadly. That doesn't mean that the film fails. It is highly entertaining, sometimes even exciting and has quite a huge surprise for fans of the original, which was no less than the best scary film of the last decade. It even has a truly evil ending without copying the first. Not bad at all, even if a bit repetitive at times.
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