MovieChat Forums > The Descent: Part 2 (2009) Discussion > My theory for the ending *Spoilers*

My theory for the ending Spoilers

posted 15 years ago by jmca_2005
84 replies | jump to latest

Having loved the first movie, I decided to watch this one with high hopes.

Thought it was a decent enough movie but definately no where near as good as the first, the re-appearance of Juno was a great twist but up until that point, I thought it was just another basic horror.

So watched it through, watched as Rios finally escaped (in the same kind of shots that we saw Sarah 'escape' with in the first movie ;) ) and all seemed fine until the old guy (can't remember his name so he will be known as OG in this post) hits Rios and leaves her right over the hole for the mutants to get her. It got me thinking back to the first movie.

OG must have been in his late 50's? maybe early 60's, and if you remember from the first movie, the team found old equipment from a previous exploration (I can't remember how old they said it was so it may make my theory invalid) which means that a previous team had been down there (obviously!)

What if the previous team never escaped...except for one...OG!

He may have ventured into those caves years before the first movie, could have gotten seperated and found a way out of those caves and waited for his team to return, but they never did, so he goes back to the cave and finds these mutants, which obviously wouldn't have been there when his team was lost. This gets him thinking and then maybe realising that his team could have evolved into these things (which would explain their Human appearance) and OG would do anything to keep them alive, since a team is not just that, it is a friendship that would have been built up for years (like with Juno and Sarah's team in the first movie) so he will feed them and protect them at any cost, even if it means murder.

I've probably opened up more questions than I've answered with this but what do you all think?

[–] indyj1 15 years ago

Hate to poke a big hole in that theory, but the piton they found in the first movie was closer to 100 years old than 40. The girls even said something to that effect when they discovered it.

The old geezer having something to do with the disappearance in the mine makes more sense, or at least as can be made about that completely and utterly bizarre ending.

[–] Synetech 13 years ago

Yup, Holly said that nobody has used gear like that for 100 years, so I would not be comfortable trying to shoehorn Oswald being part of that previous expedition into the story.

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Synetech

[–] majas1 15 years ago

agree with other commentors that the kind of evolution you're suggesting would take 1000's of years. we assumed, even in the first one, that the crawlers were evolved from the same kind of prehistoric human we came from, but evolved differently to suit their environment. as far as the ending spoiler, remember that it did not actually show the crawler get to rios - we're thinking that the old man was using her as bait - remember the crawler was coming toward her, and the old man didn't actually drop her into the cave - if the crawler comes to the entrance to grab her, the old man can shoot or capture it as it comes out, discover a new "species" and make more money than any old gold mine could provide. re: the plothole with why he didn't just do this with sarah: when she came at him from the road, he didn't get to see where she had exited the cave, maybe he didn't get this info until the police came back to the cave with her, and that's what the wink is about. if he has been providing the creatures with food in a manner mentioned by one of the other posters, he still could have been confused by sarah's appearance on the road and not connected the creatures with some scared screaming woman since no one else had ever made it out, in this case, the wink may be foreshadowing of his plans to find a way to profit from their coming demise, or it could just be a way for the writers to express that he's getting some kind of amusement in knowing what is waiting for them in the caves.

of course, endings like this are really open to intepretation, and i agree, i don't really know that there's enough there to an interesting 3rd movie. i really liked this one, of course it doesn't stand alone without the first, but for a sequel (bonus points for getting the same actors to play in their original parts) i think the ending was a good one.

[–] brucecarson2008 15 years ago

Yeah, I preferred he "coverup" explanation, but as people have pointed out, why did he save Sarah? You nail the only reasonable reason for that: He didn't think she came from the cave.

But Rios as bait, that requires the fewest logical leaps. It's the most straightforwad reason I've seen so far.

I'd also like to see a third. But they should have some of the same actors. And if they're going to have different actors, don't have them play the same characters (that is extremely lame). Also the plot must be good.

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[–] CiniDent 15 years ago

Maybe he saved Sarah because she made it to the road and he didn't want to risk being seen hitting a woman in the head with a shovel or risk being seen putting a missing woman into his truck. After he lay Rios by the tunnel he looked around for any spying eyes so it was obvious that he was extremely careful.

And I really like the religious angel of why he would be sacrificing humans and animals to the creatures. If he (and others) believe that this is a portal to hell then it would make sense. His great grandfather and the other minors really believed they opened hell, right? It's not to far fetched that this belief could have been passed down. And if it was his great grandfathers generation that started the whole thing, he would have grown up with this belief - making it even more real to him.

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[–] brucecarson2008 15 years ago

Good point, if he was brought up believing that, I can see that it would seem quite real to him. So that is another point in favor of the religious angle.

Certainly they seem like hell spawn.

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[–] JahWoo 15 years ago

being as Appalachian mountain folk aren't exactly known for being the brightest bulbs in the ice chest.

Maybe he didn't kill sarah because he knew she would come off like a blathering idiot no one would believe...and he assumed she would end up at the loony bin.

the other chick had her wits about her and thus was a threat to exposing the secret....

and here's a huge perhaps....maybe there's a secret underground who goes on tours of the caves and if their secret was exposed the old hillbilly would stop making money and thus be poor and no one wants anything to step on their livelyhood :D

seriously...it's like hostile......or as someone suggested he feeds them they get him gold...so THEY pay for him to occasionally lure in the occasional group of humans so they can have some fun

seems more people hated it than liked it but I hope another film is made...and maybe it will get theatrical release in the usa....the potential for this to have made tons of dough was lost

[–] ljl16 15 years ago

I like it, but it's probably not it.

I personally think that this ending just made no sense. It almost ruined the film for me, but hey, I have a huge capability of forgetting lame sequences in films (OK, maybe not for spidey 3, but normally I do).

But, if I had to choose an option, this would be it: OG's grandpa or his friends ARE the cave men. How? By eating some strange herbs/mushrooms/fungus/whatever that infected them and turned them into this gollum-like-zombies xD

[–] wtdk123 15 years ago

The ending of the film kind of sucked but it's clear that the old man's comments at the beginning were there for a reason. I suspect that they believe that the miners broke through releasing some sort of demons.

It makes sense that they built the "chapel" to help keep the creatures at bay and, perhaps, they were making sacrifices as well to protect themselves. Perhaps at one time the creatures came above ground as well attacking the towns people until they fed them on a regular basis.

[–] dublur227 15 years ago

How about we just dismiss this "part 2" and just live in the world of The Descent. There's no need to have a part 2. Sara wakes up lost in the cave having never escaped. THE END

[–] [email protected] 15 years ago

I watched The Descent 2 yesterday. It was mediocre. I did like revisiting the cave and the creatures and some of the original cast, but on a whole, nothing new was added and it was essentially a repeat of the first one.

Now, in analyzing the ending, I think we should utilize Occam's razor here (Wikipedia phrases it nicely: "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" and the conclusion thereof, that the simplest solution is usually the correct one).

So, using this maxim, the simplest answer is (as stated before) that it was a "shock" ending and it leaves the movie open for another sequel. The religion angle is a possibility, although I can't imagine religious zealots building a church over an unholy site or a "gateway to hell". Why not just use dynamite and cover the hole? Then again, they could have become a cult to worship these demon-like people, but there simply isn't enough in the movie to infer any sort of religious angle. It's simply the movie industry capitalizing on the success of the first film.

EDIT: Incidentally, in response to the above poster, that is an alternate ending for the original Descent; i.e. she imagines escaping but in fact is still in the cave, delusional. A more fitting ending in my opinion, especially after watching the sequel. Since she did escape the first time, why return her to the cave and kill her? Either leave her do die in the first movie or let her live.

[–] eSJayBee 15 years ago

That was labeled as an alternate ending for you, superflygt? Where did you see that?

As far as I know, that was the ORIGINAL ending and when the movie was brought to the US, the original ending was chopping up to become an alternate ending that was "happier" for test audiences in America (Sarah escapes and that's that).

[–] [email protected] 15 years ago

Being in the States, I saw The Descent here in theaters several years ago. When it was released on DVD, that ending (not actually escaping, imagining her daughter while being stuck in the cave) was labeled as an alternative ending.

However, I much prefer that than having her escape.

[–] haafket 14 years ago

He prolly works for the government! :D

[–] Lowenbotten 15 years ago

This is perhaps one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard. People would evolve into those creatures in just a few decades. You're such an idiot for posting this. Don't ever post anything stupid ever again.

[–] zwarriorz 14 years ago

Do you remember the end of the first Descent? Sarah stabs Juno in the leg, escapes through the opening - it's daylight; she runs to her Range Rover(?), DRIVES until the open highway, stops (you remember the truck passing by - and she vomits), and a moment later screams at Juno (who'd she stabbed, and left to die in the cave) 'right next to her' in the Rover! You then see Sarah back in the cave, hallucinating that her child is right in front of her - which makes us believe that in reality, Sarah is still in the Cave, and 'imagined' her subsequent escape right after she'd stabbed Juno. You were made to believe that's it - game over. However, at the beginning of Part 2, Sarah actually had escaped - by foot, and without her Rover.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

[–] LocalDoctor 14 years ago

Sign me up for Byecruelworld's theory too. I don't think it's correct, but it's the best theory I see in this topic.

However, I would like to say something: Can we all get off the idea that it's evolution? Please? At the very least, lets get off the idea that it was evolution that happened in the span of a few decades...or even a few hundred years.

Hell, the idea of those creatures being an evolution of humans within even a few thousand years is ludicrous. Each major human evolution generally takes a couple of hundred thousand years. If you look for the human evolutionary point that is most drastically different physically from current humans, you would have to go, according to Wikipedia, back about 1.3 million years.

So yeah, to get to the point, to get from 'human' to those creatures you see in the movie using evolution as a theory, you'll have to stretch your timespan pretty wide.

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[–] king_of_panda 14 years ago

the missing link?

[–] chambers-18 14 years ago

If OG didnt feed them,would they feed themselves outside the cave? Is this so they dont have to travel outside of the hole? But how did they feed themselves 100's of years ago? This is why I love this movie. Any suggestions? thanks.

[–] stan530 14 years ago

Actually there's no evidence that OG feeds them at all. Some people think this because they can find no other explanation as to why he kind of sacrificies Rio to the crawlers at the end. But there's so much of them however that OG would've to hunt 24/7 literally to deliver enough food, let alone the fact that the creatures are around much longer than modern humans live there.You said it.

So they come out at night and hunt for themselves. The cave is littered with sceletons and in the first part the group stumbles on the corpse of a deer short before entering. If it was killed by OG and the crawlers can't get along outside well he should've put it next to the entrance of the cave, at least.

The real reason why he ko's Rio and leaves her to die is probably that he definetly knows that she knows about the cave/mine. I guess it has something to do with the gold down there which he knows about, but couldn't legally get hold on as he's likely not the owner of the mine.
As to Sarah; he didn't kill her in the first place since he might've thought she didn't know the mine (because he didn't show and opened her group the entrance) and could've been badly mauled by some other animal.

Doh, that's more than you asked for ..but hey that's the theory thread ..haha

[–] Caprica_Tonks 14 years ago

It would take millenia to evolve from human into crawler.

~See? The man's immune to sweater yams~

[–] my_newsletter 14 years ago

Maybe the old guy has some weird idea that the crawlers are his kin, but evolved --not necessarily that they are really his kin.

[–] MeBlondie 14 years ago

The movies are frustrating.!

He left Rios there cos she seen too much, and he let Sarah go cos i guess he didnt know she had came from the cave cos he picked her up at the road side.

its a mystery, but i hope they dont go down the whole 'family' route for the 3rd movie.

..ooops i did it again..