- Directed by Jon Harris
- Written by James McCarthy, J Blakeson, James Watkins
- Stars Michael J. Reynolds, Shauna Macdonald, Jessika Williams
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 34 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2YDxYnW_Bo
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s not quite as good as the first one, but it was a surprisingly good sequel. Due to production issues, this didn’t get a theatrical release, and it slipped under the radar a little. Since we know there are monsters in the caves, we get to them right away, so the action starts a bit sooner this time around. The cast is good, the effects are great, and they still manage to make caving look not any fun at all. For maximum enjoyment, you should absolutely see the first movie before seeing this one.
Synopsis
Somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, an old guy in a tow truck almost hits a deer. Sarah Carter, from the first film, comes to his window for help. Credits roll.
A few days after the first movie, rescue teams are searching for the missing women. Sheriff Vaines goes to visit Sarah in the hospital, but she’s in shock and sedated. She’s a suspect in the murder of the other five girls, since she was covered in blood that wasn’t hers. Sarah doesn’t remember any of what happened. Since the girls lied about their caving plan, the men are searching in the wrong place.
There’s an old mine shaft in the basement of an old church. The tow truck driver says that there’s a whole uncharted system of caves down there that connects to it. The sheriff thinks Sarah could go down there and help search. Deputy Rios gets Sarah ready to go down into the cave; there’s an old elevator, so how bad could it be? They assemble a team of three professional rescue folks, the two police, and Sarah.
The ancient elevator doesn’t kill them, and they eventually make it to the bottom. Dan is the leader of the rescue group. They explore for a while. They have an audio scanner that picks up sounds down in the tunnels. Those movement noises have gotta be a survivor, right? They do find a body. Sarah starts to remember, but now everyone thinks she may have murdered her friends. Sarah goes berserk and runs off. Everyone splits up to go looking for her.
The sheriff is attacked, and he fires his gun, causing a cave-in that closes off the way they came and traps them all inside. Cath gets trapped in a tight spot, and the others start digging. They soon figure that it’s hopeless and start looking for another way. One of the creatures finds her first; she manages to escape.
Dan, Greg, and Rios find the “boneyard,” and it’s pretty obvious that Sarah didn’t do all that. They find the lost video camera from the first film. Sarah and Rios watch the creatures on the tape as one of them crawls up behind them. One of the creatures kills Dan. Greg and Cath find one another.
The sheriff finds Dan’s mutilated body. Greg is soon killed, and Cath finds herself hanging over a chasm, but she makes it through that, only to find there are monsters on both sides of the pit.
Sarah and Rios have to go through a water-filled tunnel, and Rios is terrified. Rios records a final message on her phone, but Sarah says they can still get out.
The sheriff figures out that he’s not alone down here and has a brief fistfight with a creature, but he’s rescued by– Juno, who isn’t as dead as we were led to believe in the first movie. She steals his flashlight and runs away, but he follows. Sarah and Rios beat one of the monsters to death with a crampon and a pin hairpin.
Sarah and Rios run into the sheriff and Juno, and the two fight. Juno calms down and says she thinks she knows the way out. The creatures regularly go to the surface to hunt. She couldn’t get out because she had no light plus her leg was injured. Sarah refuses to follow Juno, so the sheriff handcuffs her to his arm. Three minutes later, someone gets his arm cut off and falls to his death.
The three women find the tunnel to the outside that Sarah used last time, but there are creatures all around. One of the things drags a big stag down into the tunnel and calls all the others for food. Something goes wrong, and the three have to fight. Juno dies… again.
Dozens of the blind cave creatures close in around them, and Sarah distracts them from Rios, who climbs up the tunnel and gets away.
Then she’s beaten over the head by the tow-truck guy who drags her body back to the hole to feed the “people” down there.
Commentary
These two films really make caving look fun, don’t they?
This took place in a pitch-black dark cave system, and yet we could still see everything that was happening. Too many newer films get carried away with the darkness.
In the first film, the monsters didn’t show up until around halfway through the film; here, they show up pretty quickly. This film doesn’t have quite the claustrophobic atmosphere of the first, as the monsters are the focus, not the caving. Seeing Juno turn up again was a big surprise.
The final scene was also a surprise. Downer! It wasn’t as good as the first one, but neither of us hated it.