The Descent : Part 2 Movie Review

The Descent : Part 2

                                                     

The Descent : Part 2 is a British horror thriller movie released in 2009. As the name suggests, this movie is the sequel of the British horror film ‘The Descent’ which was released in 2005. This movie was produced by Christian Colson and co-produced by Paul Ritchie and Neil Marshall. It was directed by Jon Harris. The major roles of The Descent : Part 2 were played by Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Krysten Cummings, Gavan O'Herlihy, Joshua Dallas, Douglas Hodge and Anna Skellern.

In The Descent : Part 2, one of the survivors of its prequels comes back from the cave and then lead a team of police and scientist to that cave again, who now face those awful underground creatures.

A scene from the movie The Descent: Part 2

Plot:

The Descent : Part 2 starts form where its prequel ended. At the beginning, we see police and other people are searching for the missing girls (from part 1) where one of them, Sarah, comes out alive. She is admitted in a hospital. The doctors there find the proofs of her  heavy fighting and also find bloods of other people on her clothes, which they suspect, are the bloods of the other missing girls. But the police can’t get any information about the other girls from her, because she has lost her memory of the previous 2 days.

With the help of a dog, the police find the way from where Sarah has escaped. The police sheriff, along with his deputy and an expert with his 2 trainees take Sarah there. That place was the entry of an abandoned mine, which had a cave system. They find some information from the mine’s caretaker and decide to enter there. Taking proper preparations, they enter the mine by an old lift. But when the lift starts to descend, the caretaker winks at one of the members of the group.

They find the mine and then the entry of the cave system. An old sign was there at the entry of the cave to warn people to not to enter. But soon after their entry, Sarah starts to remember little bit of her memory in the cave and tells everyone to not to go there, but the others ignore her, thinking her mind is playing tricks with her. They also find the body of one missing girl, who were murdered. The sheriff suspects Sarah for the incident. While passing a narrow tunnel, Sarah remembers more from her earlier experience here and suddenly attacks others and tries to run away at the deeper parts of the cave.

The sheriff follows her and thus two of them get detached from the group. Then the sheriff sees a strange creature and in panic, shoot from his gun which causes the cave to collapse. One of the trainees of the expert gets trapped in rocks. The other 3 (the expert, his other trainee and the deputy of the sheriff) starts again to find an escape route. They reach to a room full of bones and find the camera of the missing girls. From the camera, the see the human-like creatures and then those creatures attack them. The team gets split and the expert gets killed by the creature where the deputy was saved by Sarah. Sarah tells the deputy that the creatures are blind and they hunt via sound.

When another creature is trying to attack the trapped trainee, she escapes and kills that creature. She then finds the other trainee and together, tries to survive and find their way out of there. But after several of their attempts to stay alive, they find the body of another lady from the previous group and then, get killed by the creatures.

Sarah and the deputy keep on hiding from the creatures on their way to escape. Meanwhile, the sheriff who was alone, falls in front of another creature and when the creature was about to kill him, Juno (a lady from the previous group, who has also survived but couldn’t get out of the cave like Sarah) saves him. After all these days of living inside the cave and fighting those creatures, Juno seemed mentally unbalanced.

Finally the four of them gets together and Juno and Sarah start to fight with each other. At one point, they understand that this fighting will not help any of them and they need to be united to get out of the cave alive.

To stay alive, their only options are to stay away from those creatures as much as possible and to find a way out of the cave system as soon as possible. Can all of them succeed?

My Review about the movie The Descent : Part 2:

First of all, I liked this movie.

The plot of The Descent : Part 2 is good, although its predictable. The fate of the group is what we regularly see in all horror movies, nothing new. At the very ending, there is a little surprise, but not what we cannot predict at all.

The goal of a horror movie is to make you scared, and here the director has successfully achieved that goal. Here in The Descent : Part 2, the tension grows up very slowly from the beginning and the movie seemed pretty balanced. The good jobs of sound and lighting effects have helped to create a frightening environment. The cave looked beautiful when the group enters there, but later on looked equally scary. But I think, the set could be better on the scary part. The sudden appearances of the creatures in The Descent : Part 2 with loud sound effects are good enough to make you startle.

The acting is good, so are the dialogues. The makeups are good for most of the parts, only at some small cases, it felt like overdo. The creatures also looked good (read: scary). The only negative side of The Descent : Part 2 is the effects of the blood. Here, the human blood looked pink, which has given a very cheap feeling for some parts. I don’t understand why they couldn’t do any better with those effects.

I also felt like The Descent : Part 2 had some overuse of violence. Those violences, bloods and some scenes with the corpses felt unnecessary.  This movie could do better without them.

Although there are no nude scenes in The Descent : Part 2, but for the violence, you cannot watch it with kids.

I haven’t watched The Descent (part 1) yet, but still enjoyed this movie. Although it’s the continuation of its prequel, but you don’t need to watch that one earlier to understand its plot or to enjoy this movie. Trust me, not watching The Descent (part 1) will not ruin your experience of The Descent: Part 2. But yes, after watching this one, I feel I should watch The Descent.

So overall, I liked watching The Descent : Part 2  I’m not sure how much the fans of other genre of movies will enjoy it, but as a horror, its better than average and I’ll recommend The Descent : Part 2  to all horror movie lovers.

How much did you like this movie? Write in comments.

For those who are interested:

IMDB Link: The Descent : Part 2 IMDB

Wikipedia Link: The Descent : Part 2 wiki

To buy or rent this movie from Amazon, or to watch online, you can find the best deal here: The Descent : Part 2 Movie

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Movie Review

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

                                                                   

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is an American-German action horror fantasy film released in 2013. This movie is co-written and directed by Tommy Wirkola and produced by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick and Beau Flynn. The movie was filmed in Germany. The title roles of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters are played by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton. Famke Janssen, Pihla Viitala, Peter Stormare, Derek Mears, Thomas Mann and Rainer Bock has played other important roles. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters was also released in 3D.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is about a brother and a sister who hunt witches and at one of their mission, they find a huge challenge to kill the leader of the witches, which also brings some truth about the siblings' identity.  

Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton in  Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Plot:

The plot of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters starts when two siblings, Hansel and Gretel were kids. One night, suddenly, their father takes them to a jungle and leaves them there. While wandering around, they find a house made of candy. They enter that house and find a witch inside. The witch tries to kill them, but they fight the witch and finally kill her. Later on, the brother and sister duo, Hansel and Gretel becomes professional and renowned witch hunters.

One day, in a small town where small kids were going missing, a lady is caught for the allegation of witchcraft and the sheriff is about to execute her. Just then, Hansel and Gretel appears. They are hired by that town’s mayor to solve the problem of witches. Hansel checks her and confirms that she is not a witch. Then, when Hansel and Gretel starts to look for the witches, the sheriff also sends a group of men to the jungle at night for the same reason. All of the members of that group get killed by the grand witch. Hansel and Gretel catches a witch, and by interrogating her, they learn that the witch leader is preparing for a grand ritual, for which, she needs to sacrifice six boys and six girls each born at separate months. Hansel and Gretel also finds a teenage fan of them in the town, who himself also keeps knowledge about witches.

Suddenly, the grand witch, with her team, attacks the town and takes their targeted kid. Hansel and Gretel try to fight them. While fighting, Gretel gets hit and becomes unconscious. Later on, she is brought to safety and gets taken care of by their teenage fan. Hansel follows another witch to the jungle, but also gets hit.

The next morning, the lady they saved earlier, finds Hansel and helps him to get healed. In the meantime, Gretel searches the jungle for her brother and gets caught by the sheriff and his team. They beat her, but she gets saved by a somewhat human-like creature named troll. The troll takes Gretel to a safe place and helps her. When Gretel asks him for the reason why he has helped her, he replies that troll saves witches and then he leaves. Then Hansel and Gretel reunite at their old childhood home. To their wonder, they find the place as a witch’s layer. Then the grand witch comes there and tells them about their past. She tells them the identity of their mother, how their parent died and also reveals that Gretel is a white witch herself. Then they start to fight and again, the grand witch defeats Hansel and Gretel and abducts Gretel for her grand ritual.

Again, when Hansel wakes up, he finds that lady whom they saved. Then she says that she is also a white witch. Next, they gather all their weapons and the lady blesses them. Then, Hansel, that lady and Hansel and Gretel’s teenage fanboy from the town head for the place where the grand ritual was taking place.

The last part of the movie is about their attempt to save Gretel and the kidnapped children and about Hansel and Gretel’s challenge to take revenge on the grand witch.

My review about Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters:

First of all, I felt disappointed after watching Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.

Actually, seeing the trailer and posters and most importantly, considering the casting, I had a very high expectation about this movie. But Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters has totally failed to keep up with my expectation. Both of Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton has grown a good reputation for themselves already and I don’t understand why they had to act in this movie.

The weakest part of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is its plot. The plot is too weak and simple to satisfy the movie lovers. While keeping everything as they are, just a more sophisticated plot could make Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters far, far better. And needless to say, it was pretty predictable. Its not that every movie has to have some twist in the plot, but at least it could be better than two siblings who are witch hunters, learns their past and then go on their mission.

And several unnecessary scenes of violence also add up to the negative side of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. The director could do better without them.

But on the good side of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters  the acting and dialogues are good. Same goes for the make-ups. The witches also looked okay, where the troll looked like the “Ogre” from the animation ‘Shrek”. The location also looked good and the weapons looked old styled but fashionable.

This movie features a small scene of nudity. So considering it and the violence, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is not a movie for kids.

The special effects are also good, although they felt insufficient. A little more use of special effects would look good on this movie.

So, overall, although Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters has a better than average IMDB rating of 6.1 (while I’m writing this review), I didn’t like this movie. You can consider watching it by considering its casting, but I will not recommend Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters to anyone who is looking for good movie to have some time spent pleasantly.

How much did you like Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters? Feel free to comment.

For those who are interested:

IMDB link: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters IMDB

Wikipedia Link: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Wiki

 To buy or rent this movie from Amazon, or to watch online, you can find the best deal on in here: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Movie

The Amazing Spider Man Movie Review

The Amazing Spider Man 
                                                                      

The Amazing Spider-Man is an American superhero film (like Captain America: The Winter Soldier) released in 2012. As we all know, this movie is based on the famous Marvel Comics character “Spider-Man”.  The Amazing Spider Man is the fourth movie of this Spider -Man series, but after the third, this one starts again from the very beginning of the original story, thus serving as a reboot. This movie is written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves, directed by Marc Webb and starred by Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Irrfan Khan, Martin Sheen and Sally Field. This movie is released also in 3D.  

In The Amazing Spider-Man, we see how Peter Parker becomes the Spider Man, his struggles before and after his transformation and how he faces the villain, Lizard Man.

A scene from the movie The Amazing Spider Man

Plot:

The plot of The Amazing Spider-Man starts when Peter Parker was a kid. One night, in a hurry, Peter’s father takes Peter to Uncle Ben and Aunt May’s house and leaves him there taking Peter’s mother with him. They never returned. Their fate was not shown at that time of the movie.

Peter grew up to a teenager. In his school, he was regularly bullied by some other teens. He always carried a camera with him as he was fond of photography. But one day, some bullies beat him and break his camera when he refuses to take photos of those boys bullying another student. This incident also helps him to earn respect from beautiful Gwen.

One day Peter accidentally discovers his father’s secret documents. From his uncle Ben, he learns that his father was working with Dr. Curt Connors of Oscorp and then we see how his parents died. To learn more, Peter goes to Oscorp and enters there taking the identity of an intern. Then he sees Gwen from his school is taking the interns to a tour in Oscorp and he mixes with that team. Soon, with his brilliance, he gets noticed by Dr. Curt Connors, who, at that time, is working on cross species genetic exchange to cure the human from different disease. Dr. Connors' target is to cure the head of Oscorp and also to get his arm back.

Peter gets detached from the intern group and sneaks into a special lab, where he gets bitten by some exceptional type of spiders. His suspicious activities get caught by Gwen and she throws him away from the group. While returning home, he starts to feel his extraordinary abilities.

Soon Peter learns to control and use his new abilities and teaches the bullies at his school a lesson. Peter also meets Dr. Connors in his house and gives him some clue (which he has found from his father’s research) to complete his unfinished research. Peter gives Dr. Connors his identity and starts to help him with his research, which finally brings the success to regenerate an arm of a mouse. But after returning, Peter gets scolded by his uncle Ben for forgetting his responsibility. Angrily, Peter leaves the house and his uncle follows to search for him. In a store, he meets a thief who helps him, but accidentally kills uncle Ben. Peter finds the body of his uncle. Peter also realizes that it was him, who saw the thief stealing and had let him go. Later on, police gave him some clues about that thief.

Peter starts to beat up criminals to find that thief. From a painting on a gym’s wall, he gets inspired to make a costume. He makes that costume and also creates some kind of machine to shoot web from his wrist.

In the meantime, Dr. Connors’ boss pressures him to apply his newly found serum on human. When Dr. Connors rejects, his boss threatens him that he will shut down the whole project and also says, Peter’s father also didn’t agree to test his medicine on human. Out of desperation, Dr. Connors applies the serum on himself and turns into a big human-lizard.

Peter goes to Gwen’s house to attend her invitation and finds that, Gwen’s father is the police chief, who is looking for spider-man. They both had a little argument on the dinner table. After the dinner, Peter reveals his identity (as spider-man) to Gwen and they kiss. Then he hears police siren and Gwen’s dad rushes to a bridge where the lizard-man attacks. Peter also rushes there and saves some people.

On the next few days, Peter does some research and finds a possible hiding place of the lizard-man in the sewer. He then fights the lizard, but loses and escapes from there. Peter tells the police chief about the identity of the lizard-man, but he doesn’t trust him completely. The lizard man (Dr. Connors) learns Spider-Man’s identity from his camera and attacks his school to stop him, but Spider-Man again saves the students.  Later, he finds the plan of the lizard-man, that is, to use a special machine of Oscorp to convert all the people of the city to a stronger version of human, i.e., lizard-man.

The next part of the movie is about the plan of the lizard-man and the attempts of the spider-man to stop him.

My Review about The Amazing Spider-Man:

First of all, I liked The Amazing Spider-Man. Although I didn’t find it mind-blowing or extra-ordinary amazing, but I still liked it.

The plot of The Amazing Spider-Man is simple and pretty predictable. Almost all of us know the story of Spider-Man, like what happened to his uncle, how he got transformed etc, and this movie gives no surprise. The ending is also very predictable.

The dialogues are okay, not bad or nothing special. I didn’t like the acting of Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man. I mean, his acting was not bad at all, but to me, he seemed too smart to be a kid who is regularly being bullied by his classmates. Here I missed Tobey Maguire, who’s innocent (and sometimes, confused) face and beautiful acting matched perfectly with the character he was playing in Spider-Man (part 1). The acting of all other characters of The Amazing Spider-Man were also good, but again I missed beautiful Kirsten Dunst. I’m not complaining about the artists here, I just missed the old ones.

The make-ups are good, except for the lizard-man. To me, it looked funny, not the image of a scary villain. Here in The Amazing Spider-Man the villain is not evil, his intentions were not bad, but harmful and wrong. He himself is a tragic hero.

The special effects are very good in The Amazing Spider-Man. Specially, the continuous shot in the action scene in the school where the Spider-Man was running over the lizard all around it trying to put it in nets looked awesome. All other flying and action scenes also looked beautiful.

At the last parts of the The Amazing Spider-Man, I was really hoping to see some more lizards after the lizard -man used gas on some police, but there was nothing like that. I think it could be a good addition to the movie.

To all Spider-Man fans, The Amazing Spider-Man should come as a big relief after the last part (part 3) of the previous Spider-Man series, the series which started with an amazing movie but kept getting worse at each sequel.

If you think after watching pervious three movies, there is nothing new to watch in The Amazing Spider-Man, you’ll make a wrong guess. There are a lot of differences in this movie with the previous one. For example, The Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man doesn’t enjoy public fame like the previous one, here he doesn’t have a photo-journalism career, here webs doesn’t come out of his hands, he makes an electronics device for that and here he hunts criminals for his personal vendetta, not to help people. In this movie, most of the Spider-Man’s moves are also different.

In my judgment, between Spider-Man (part one) and The Amazing Spider-Man, I’ll keep Spider-Man (part 1) on top. But The Amazing Spider-Man has a great potential and I’m looking forward to enjoy The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Whatever, The Amazing Spider-Man is still a nice movie. An IMDB rating of 7.1 supports it. By watching this movie, I felt my time nicely spent. If you are a Spider-Man fan or a superhero movie fan, I’d recommend The Amazing Spider-Man to you.

How do you feel about this movie? Feel free to write in the comments.

For those who are interested:

IMDB Link: The Amazing Spider-Man IMDB

Wikipedia Link: The Amazing Spider-Man Wiki

To buy or rent this movie from Amazon, you can find the best deal on it here:  The Amazing Spider-Man Movie