The Descent: Part 2 is one of those troublesome films that seem to be becoming more and more prevalent in today's cinema – the unwarranted sequel.

No one asked for it, nobody particularly cared for it and, considering the way the first movie ended, nobody thought it even possible.

Now before I get my teeth into this underground shocker (no pun intended), let me first say I have no axe to grind regarding sequels.

For example, I find Mad Max 2 an infinitely better movie than Mad Max, and I am sure if I scoured my DVD collection there would be plenty more to add to that list.

But with the Descent, director Neil Marshall made pretty damn sure that it was all wrapped up in a single film.

Once the opus hit American shores though, studio bigwigs decided they wanted a slightly more 'upbeat' conclusion and ditched the 'too dark' ending that British audiences got to savour.

And it is this switcheroo that allowed the film-makers to conjure up The Descent: Part 2, which centres on sole survivor Sarah (Shauna Macdonald).

Now directed by effects man Jon Harris, the plot centres around a psychologically-scarred Sarah being hauled off her hospital bed to aid the search for the missing pot-holers.

Unbeknownst to the search party, and the local police of course, the women are not simply missing, but have been dined on by the underground nasties that are dubbed 'Crawlers'.

What follows is another 90-minutes of mayhem as the fresh meat is picked off one by one by these creatures.

This is by no means a terrible film, I would just not describe it as particularly good either.

Unlike the first film, which took its time to build a rapport between the characters and give you some insight before the action switched underground, this sequel offers none of that.

The entire set-up seems to be to get everybody underground as quickly as possible and get to the gut-munching, which simply means you just don't care who lives or dies.

There are plenty of the eye-rolling, distracting stupid decisions so associated with films of this ilk, and a confusion that gore equals scares, which it quite clearly does not.

Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of the red stuff, but the blood used in this is so unrealistic looking I simply laughed every time it splashed across the screen.

There are some nice touches – the 'night-vision' scenes are pretty tense and the cave setting does add a claustrophobic air to proceedings.

But there really is not that much to recommend, and just when you think you have escaped with your cinematic integrity intact, along comes a braindead 'surprise' ending that had me puzzling for all of about two minutes before I decided it just wasn't worth the effort.

The Descent is by no means a great film, but a taut, tidy little shocker it certainly is, but with this Part 2 its reputation has now been somewhat sullied.