The Descent was a diverting slice of Scottish horror that dealt aptly with the psychological implications of losing a child while delivering enough visceral excitement for the gorehounds. It was well acted across the gamut – a rarity in the genre – and after managing over $50m worldwide against a paltry £3.5m budget, it became prime franchise material, resulting in the disappointingly crass, cynically titled The Descent Part 2.

Part 2 is ripe to be compared to the original Descent as Aliens is so frequently compared to Alien, aside from the fact that placing this within spitting distance of anything James Cameron or Ridley Scott has touched would be sacrilegious. Part 2 is ever-so-slightly more high concept than the first film, but what makes it reminiscent of Cameron’s film is how it depicts a woman returning to the hostile environment from which she just (barely) emerged, this time venturing in with a team of overzealous grunts, while also pondering the death of the protagonist’s daughter. However, to expect a film with the depth or nuance of either Aliens or the original Descent is to be extremely disappointed by this soulless and trite sequel.

The film begins as Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) is recovering from the events of the first film, presumed to be the sole survivor.  The local police and rescue forces, however, discovering that the girls had ventured into uncharted cave systems, need Sarah to go back in with them, hoping that a simple nod of her head or vague memory might allow them to locate her friends, especially Juno (Natalie Mendoza), who happens to be the daughter of a Senator. Reluctantly, coaxed by the abrasive Sherriff Vaines (Gavan O'Herlihy), Sarah leads them through the cave systems, but, with the loss of her daughter and the events of the previous film still adversely affecting her, she may be more a hindrance than a help.

Director Jon Harris has worked as an Editor on various accomplished productions – Snatch, Ripley’s Game, Layer Cake and Eden Lake to name a few – but those well-constructed films apparently haven’t taught him anything about good narrative, because The Descent 2 is a mostly routine horror film that, aside from a few moments of intermittent tension, is mostly a shameless retread of the original film minus most of the suspense, wit and smart psychology. Just as the film’s evil cave-dwellers hunt the poor saps that go spelunking, this film’s creators have mercilessly pilfered elements from the original film and reduced them to tiresome horror clichés in the name of a quick buck (or if the film’s #9 UK box office opening is any indication, maybe not).

While the premise isn’t exactly illuminating, there was the potential for at least a serviceable horror film here, and in interviews, Harris claimed that, despite adding males to the serving platter, he had no intention of diluting the “girl power” motif that permeated through the first film’s all-girl roster. Harris claimed in the press that his intention was to depict the men as bumbling, heavy-handed oafs, while the women as sleek and stealthy, but in all honesty, no characters come off as glaringly intelligent this time around, and the result is a mish-mash of extremely predictable jump scares and the occasional splash of Kool Aid arterial spray.

The film really misses the boat with the potential to further examine Sarah’s disconnect from her dead daughter, particularly given that one of the rescuers, Elen (Krysten Cummings), is a mother herself. Instead of using this to exacerbate Sarah’s loss and inform the admittedly almost-good finale, we get rote clichés, with Elen recording a message to her daughter in case she doesn’t make it out, allowing the tension to fizzle out entirely. As for the rest of the group, they’re quite plainly-drawn and charmless; one never cares when they die, and when the film’s twist arrives, its sheer cartoonishness is at odds with what was up to this point trying to be realistic and divorced from Superman-esque deus ex machina.

At least The Descent Part 2 isn’t very long, though, and it breezes through its shopping list of horror conventions quite hastily. The third act just about manages the intended intensity level, but shoots itself in the foot with a laughable addendum that screams “sequel”. However, box office receipts give me hope that this one is now dead in the water.