Sanctioning a pointless sequel that ruins the ambiguity of his original’s ending indicates a serious lapse of judgement on the part of Neil Marshall. Marshall passes the torch to Jon Harris who takes over as director, revisiting the purgatorial depths of an Appalachian cave-system where a group of cavers met their grisly end. With her friends still missing, suspicion falls upon a traumatised Sarah whose memory has been conveniently erased, hence introducing a fresh batch of victims to be gruesomely culled by the murderous, subterranean ‘crawlers’.
While Harris re-creates the claustrophobia of Marshall’s original expedition quite effectively, logic and decent dialogue take a backseat to his insatiable appetite for carnage. Failing on several other counts, this a less-then-worthy successor to one of the finest horror films to emerge in recent times. By leaving the door open for a possible third instalment, Harris merely reinforces that this was a tale told sufficiently the first time round.
