Deep Rising: Poorly CGI Tentacle Monster

DEEP RISING

STARRING: Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Kevin J. O’Connor, Anthony Heald, Wes Studi, Derrick O’Connor, Cliff Curtis, Una Damon, Djimon Hounsou, Jason Flemyng, Clifton Powell, Trevor Goddard

DIRECTOR: Stephan Sommers

GENRE: Action, Horror

YEAR:  1998

COUNTRY: United States

When a band of ruthless hijackers invade the world’s most luxurious cruise ship, they’re shocked to discover the passengers have mysteriously vanished! But that doesn’t mean they are alone! Something terrifying is lurking just out of sight: a deadly force from the unexplored depths of the ocean that begins to snatch the horrified intruders one by one! On one hand, we’ve got a luxury liner making its maiden cruise whose passengers include a sexy burglar and a crook. On the other hand, we have a small, very fast ship full of mercenaries and torpedoes, whose crew is asking too few questions. In the middle, a member of the Ottoia family, and no, that’s not a drug lord. It’s a giant priapulid worm.

 

Sometimes you have generic no-brainers that bore you (like “Virus”) and other times you get generic no-brainers that actually entertain. Deep Rising is part of the latter category. This movie is stupid and it knows it. It’s very déjà vu and it knows it. But most of all, it’s guilty fun and it knows it! You want to see lots of gunplay? Tough guy stare downs? Chase sequences involving giant CGI tentacles? Or maybe some sea-doos riding around inside a cruise ship? If so, you’re in the right spot. To make everything even more enjoyable, we’re also treated to some sometimes-excessive gore (didn’t see that axe thang coming), funny one-liners (Williams and O’Connor are all about that) and situational humor that actually works (Wes Studi’s last bullet scene cracked me up).

The CGI is at times very obvious (the full creature looks like shite) and the blue screen gives a lot of potentially scary scenes away (you know something is going to happen before it happens because you see the flick jump into blue screen mode). The movie also overstays its welcome by about 15 minutes, gets very repetitive (creature attacks, they run away, creature attacks, they run away…) and is fairly predictable.

It could’ve skipped on some of the more tired conventions: The stalk sequences involving characters wandering alone in the dark take a bit too much time to get to the point (mainly because we know they’re gonna die). And did we really need the token traitor that winds up getting the worst death? Or the guy that always seems to know where the creature came from (actually the same guy)? Not really. The film could’ve also upped Tooch’s girlfriend subplot. Why did they even write her in? They hardly use her or capitalize on the fact that she’s his girl. Could’ve increased the stakes with her character.

PROS:

• Stupid and fun.
• Gunplay & other action elements.
• Excessive gore.

CONS:

• Obviously obvious.
• Repetitive.
• Lenth.
• Too many conventions.

SCORE: 6.0 / 10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6De_A9T07A

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