Directed by Jon Harris

Four years ago, in The Descent, director Neil Marshall sent six young women down a cave system in the Appalachians to scare the pants off them - and us. Now Jon Harris plunges us into stygian gloom again, after one of them, Sarah (Shauna McDonald) is found gibbering, muddy and bloody on a mountain roadside. Questioning by the Appalachians' finest doesn't get very far (is she traumatised? Is she drugged? Is she kidding??), so smelling a rat, the police, led by the old-school Sheriff Vaines decide the caves must be explored again, and insist on taking Sarah along with them.

Being the pig-headed old duffer he is, Vaines insists on taking along his gun too, which you know will only end in tears (moral no 1 - speak softly, and DON'T carry a big gun), and sure enough disaster awaits in the scary, muddy darkness, with rockfalls, interpersonal clashes, and horrible injuries. A dropped camcorder is recovered which shows film of the gals in their pre-disaster mode larking about before it all turned bad with the arrival of the local troglodytic man-eating humanoids, known as Crawlers. Soon these nasty pieces of work are here again, and, though blind, they're hypersensitive to sound, and it needs all Sarah's survival skills if any of the merry, fast-depleting, band are to escape. And just when you think it's over (moral no 2 - never trust a lovable old timer)...

The Descent was a well-made, exceedingly scary film, and I, having claustrophobic tendencies, was expecting this one to be pretty spine-tingling, but somehow it's not, very. There are nasty scenes, and the Crawlers are pretty murky and gruesome, but as we more or less know what to expect all along there isn't the suspense of the first film, which fed on our watching normality about to be disrupted by an unknown horror. It's entertaining enough, but not as much as you hope. (Moral no. 3 - only do a sequel if you've got some good new ideas)

Seen at Cinema Days, Empire Cinema, Rubery, Birmingham, 2 October 2009