Deep Rising (1998) – Stephen Sommers

Remember the 90’s? Remember how rad everything was? Your clothes were neon and all the guys either looked like Slater or Screech? The Slaters of the world walked around with mullets and tight man-tanks and apologized to no one. Remember Swayze? Fucking Swayze. That guy was the king of the 90’s. A world class mullet that could make your pager explode and a pile of Jean-jackets that could even make Urkel jealous. If Swayze had a no-talent younger brother (oh wait, he did) and that brother had a best friend with a learning disability, the friend would have played the lead in Stephen Sommers’ 1998 action-horror film Deep Rising. Unfortunately, he was unavailable, so they had to get the poor man’s, poor man’s Swayze. Mullet? Check. Muscles? Check. Acting chops? Not so fast…

Since it’s an action-horror, it’s not the scariest thing in the world. It’s supposed to be more of a high-octane monster movie than a normal scary movie. Overall, it fell flat for me though. I found the script to be trite and a little contrived. It’s like they came up with the idea for the movie in this order: Sea monster, crazy machine guns, terrorists, lady in a tight dress, quippy one-liners and catch phrases, special effects, dialog, and finally character development. There’s a lot of shooting and a bunch of sea monsters, some mercenaries, 9 torpedoes, a jet ski, and not enough blood.

The movie is about a lovable mercenary boat captain (and crew) who is hired by a group of not-so-lovable mercenaries to take them out and (unbeknownst to them) attack and rob a fancy cruise ship. Of course, on the way to the cruise ship, the merc vessel hits a small boat in the water and suffers some engine damage and a pretty serious hull breach. When they arrive and board the cruise ship, almost everyone is gone. The place is trashed and there’s blood on the ground but no bodies. The terrorists go to rob the safe and the heroes go to the machine shop to find replacement parts for their boat. Along the way the run into a few survivors and a bunch of giant squid-like monsters that can rip through a steel bulkhead like aluminum foil.

Eventually, the whole team decides to abandon the mission and get the hell off the ship. One by one, they start getting picked off by these creatures as they try to escape. The owner of the ship is up to no good and he doesn’t want any survivors, so he sabotages the team in their escape attempts. Finally fake Swayze and his hot new girlfriend have to go toe to uhh, tentacle, against the granddaddy squid monster and try to get off the ship in one piece.

It’s fairly formulaic, but still sort of fun. You can basically call out the next scene before it happens. A few things I would have fixed though: 1. Let’s see the monsters a little more (or a little less). If you’re not going to show them-that’s cool, it builds suspense, like Jaws. If you’re going to show them, great, fucking show them. I think the special effects budget limited our ability to really see these things. I still don’t really know what these creatures looked like. 2. In a movie where there was an estimated 8,000 shots fired, you should probably show someone reloading their weapon. Even just once. Ok, one guy did reload his flare gun one time, but that hardly counts.

Ok, so we’ve got some logistical and continuity issues with the film. We can excuse that. We all know what we’re getting ourselves into with this movie. I don’t think many people expected any Academy Awards. We want to see giant monsters ripping people’s heads off and eating them, blood shooting across the room and all that good stuff. We get a little bit of that, but not enough. And it all basically happens in a couple of scenes. Most of the time, when somebody dies, they just get pulled under the water and then there’s a streak of red in the water and they disappear. Lame

 

Ok, so the movie isn’t great. But it’s the cinematic equivalent to buying a ’91 Mustang on Craigslist. You know it’s going to be a piece of shit, but it’s fun to take it around the block a few times. Also, if you’re ever piloting a jet ski and you have a chick riding behind you, and you’re shooting a shotgun at a sea monster behind you, don’t fire it from 2 and a half inches from her ear, and then yell “Cock” back at her after every shot. Shotguns are loud and that’s just rude. Let her shoot, you sexist bastard. It’s not gonna make your dick any smaller.

1.     Is it scary: 2- Nope. There’s too much lame comic relief and you don’t get that spooky atmosphere.
2.     Originality: 3- Nope. Like I said, it’s cookie-cutter monster movie fluff.
3.     Blood: 4- There were a couple of good scenes, but it was pretty ‘diet coke’ for what it was.
4.     Believability: 4. I guess, other than the stuff with the guns.
5.     Setting/Cinematography: 3- Nope. There’s nothing really scary about this. I guess the isolation of being stuck on a ship with a man-eating squid should do something but it just doesn’t.

Final Score: 16/50