Thursday, November 04, 2010

Movies: Downward spiral.


Early in The Descent: Part 2, the much reviled follow-up to The Descent, there's a scene where a tracking dog is unleashed and sent into the elevator house of an abandoned mineshaft. The dog spends a few seconds in the darkened interior of the building without making a sound. The dog's handler and the deputy accompanying him grow concerned and begin to approach the hole in the door the dog used to enter the decaying structure. The dog suddenly bounds out of the building, dashes past his two startled handlers, and races down the dirt road behind them.


What scared the dog?

Because anybody watching this flick presumably saw the first installment, the assumption is that the dog saw one of the troglodyte baddies that live in the seemingly endless cave system that serves as the setting of both flicks. Given what viewers would know at that point in the flick, it's a valid hypothesis.

But we later learn that the elevator house is several stories up from the entrance of any cave entrance. And the nearest cave entrance is actually sealed off. There are no creepy crawlers in the elevator house; unless one wants to propose that a caveman spooked the dog, then quickly crawled down a couple hundred feet of cable, then sealed the cave entrance behind them.

So what scared the dog?

I propose that the dog, finding himself unleashed, realized that this was its only chance to get the hell out of The Descent: Part 2 and took it.

Smart dog.

3 comments:

Monster Scholar said...

Genius!

Spooky Sean said...

Good review?

Unknown said...

Great review! I definitely admire this movie!