Over here they've got a few new stills from The Descent: Part 2... I shouldn't be so amused by this specific picture, but I am:
See, it's a pretty blatant rip-off of an image from the first film, which is why I said I shouldn't be amused. This one, to be specific:
Not that the first Descent film is the first to use such an image, obviously - think of all the zombies that have ever crawled out of the grave, or the ending of Carrie, for example. But instead of being annoyed at this here redundancy (and I'm really starting to think once again, after a brief bout of optimism, that this Part 2 is gonna be nothing more than a pale imitation of the first film) or even trying to be so lame as to ascribe this to some kind of "homage" (that word has ceased to mean anything at all)... I'm not even gonna try. It just reminds me what I liked from the first movie and from there I have warm feelings. Warm!
But the thought suddenly occurs to me - do you think that arm in the picture from the second film belongs to the same person as it does in the first film? Or is somebody else the survivor? Or is this image not even from the ending? Oh, questions!
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4 comments:
I really can't see myself seeing this movie unless I start to hear some excellent word of mouth. The whole thing is just so superfluous. And I usually don't give this much of a shit about a horror sequel being superfluous, but with The Descent it just feels cheaper.
The first thing I thought of when I saw that pic was not The Descent but the original Carrie.
I know whose arm it is. There are plot summaries online.
Although that shot in the first movie was derivative, I always felt sure that was absolutely the idea. Crawling out of a grave, returning from the dead, ect. were pretty good metaphors for what was going on in that moment for the character - especially since she'd been acting more like a killer robot than a human being for the last 30 minutes or so, up until this moment - so I think it was deliberately trying to make us think of the whole back-from-the-dead thing with that shot.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2006/08/tracing_the_image_2_the_rebirt_1.html#more
There's a cool look at that shot and comparisms to similar shots in other horror movies [including Carrie] at that site, if you're interested. I think the Deliverence one is particularly notable, since that film was such a big influence on The Descent and all.
Oh I agree with all you say, Dale. I wasn't knocking it for being derivative - that's a lot of the charm of The Descent. Marshall makes it all work even while he's using well-worn tropes to not just guide us along but to deepen our understanding of the action. S'all love. ;-)
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