Deep Rising

Unlike a lot of monster and sci-fi movies we see these days, where apologizes are constantly made and everything is politically-correct, Deep Rising is an unapolagetic rollar-coaster which only asks us to suspend our higher thinking for an hour and a half. Intelligent by no means, Stephen Sommers' movie however definately succeeds in it's intention, which is to be a straight fun adventure. Like the rest of the movie, we've seen the plot a dozen times before in different or similar forms. A square-jawed man of the sea and his wise-cracking sidekick give a group of mercenaries a ride in their PT boat to an undisclosed location somewhere out over the murky ocean. Little does the boatman know that the soldiers-for-hire are planning to knock off a massive luxury cruise liner with an assortment of assault rifles and deadly torpedo warheads. When they reach the ship though, they find it derelict, and encounter a nightmarish tentacle beast. This movie is stupid as hell, but it knows it, and just wants to take us along on its stupid ride. As mentioned before, the movie makes no apologizes. We don't get any little kids who know more than the adults running around and saving the day; instead we get piles of horrid, blood-covered skeletons and disgustingly neat scenes of half-dead victims being regurgitated by our monster villain. Speaking of the monster, its a fairly decent CGI creation, which is surprising considering how little effort can be put into putting CG creatures onto the screen in movies with anything less of a budget than Jurassic Park or The Phantom Menace. The flick is plenty fun, but where it truly lacks is the character development area. In Deep Rising, and most movies like it, a fair amount of the characters are regulated to quick two or three word descriptions which dictate everything that they do. There's "The Womanizer", "The Coward", "The Guy Who's Scared", etc. And man, if a guys got an Austrailian or English accent..forget about it, that's his whole character right there. The two most interesting characters are Treat Williams, a third rate Bruce Willis-Mel Gibson, who nevertheless puts a likeable effort into the main hero, and the mind-numbingly beautiful Famke Jannkson as a thief the crew finds alive aboard the cruise liner. Deep Rising is a movie that knows what it wants to do, and does it well, adding some originality and excitement to a genre overflowing with badly-executed ideas and ameatuerish directing. I give Deep Rising a 6 out of 10, and I'd reccomend it to any fan of grade-B horror movies or anyone who enjoyed the 1999 remake of The Mummy.

I saw this recently on VHS, and even that was a waste of money. This was undoubtedly one of the worst films I have in a very long time. I was not aware it was supposed to be a B grade film - perhaps if I was aware it was supposed to be crap, I may not have had such an overwhelming physical reaction to it. The acting was poor, the monster was... well, unconvincing much of the time, the script had few moments that weren't pathetically lame. It was just bad. There were only two redeeming features that I could see: 1. Famke Janssen looked damn good 2. The monster ate many of the whining characters I quickly tired of, much to my enjoyment. Aside from that, it was mediocre rubbish I would not watch again, unless it was for the repeated pleasure of watching all the lame actors in it getting mercilessly slaughtered.

A group of mercenaries go towards a ship and when they board everyone is dead. Theyy search the boat no one is anywhere. So they go on with there business of stealing from the boat. But the things that killed everyone is still there. The creature is a type of anaconda, squid like thing which sucks humans dry. The movie is okay with it's moments. It's a B grade movie, but it does entertain. Pretty good for something that wasn't a big production with a big budget.