Deep Rising
To begin, I must admit that I am a horror/creature film fan. I loved Tremors, the tongue-in-cheek horror film about giant worms underground. I liked Anaconda a little because of its cool effects and Jon Voight's performance. The Relic was very entertaining, and who could forget last year's best attempt at this monster genre, Mimic? And so, only time would tell before I went out to see this film. My friends and I were waiting for the midnight showing of Dark City, and we had two hours to spare. So we checked this one out.
And you know what? It's actually a pretty good idea to see a really bad film before a great one. It just shows how good the second film really is. Deep Rising is extremely bad. My two friends laughed through most of it, and thought that I should give it my dreaded (and underused) zero star rating. Well, it isn't THAT bad. Sure, the plot, writing, and acting sucks beyond belief. But, you also have to admire Famke Janssen for coming out of this film unscathed. The Goldeneye villain turns in a very good performance, but that's all taken in context of the overall film. It's not a great performance, but compared to the rest of the cast, she is superb. Her dialogue is smart, funny, and her cynical attitude gives her character more depth than any of the others. Of course, it doesn't hurt that she looks really good too.
Deep Rising begins on board a luxury ship (can we say, Titanic?), which cost hundreds of millions to build, and even more to maintain. Aboard the ship on its initial sailing is, well, pretty much no one of importance. Let's just say that very soon after the beginning of the film, everyone aboard is pretty much dead. The ship is sailing, and everyone is having a great time. However, someone is aboard to sabotage the trip, replacing the CDs that run the ship with viruses (what year is it anyway?). The crew loses control of the ship, but that's just the beginning. Up from the bottom of the ocean comes a creature, a hungry one at that. What is the creature? Well, thankfully the producers of this film were wise enough to leave that a mystery for most of the picture (in the grand tradition of Jaws, although it really wasn't a mystery with that film--you just never saw it). Of course, that's about all they were wise about when making this.
Soon after the creature attacks the ship, almost everyone on board is either dead, or dying. However, there are a few survivors, including a jewel thief (Famke Janssen) and Canton, the owner of the ship (Nick Nolte look-a-like Anthony Heade). Of course, this isn't good enough for a monster film. There is a convoluted subplot involving a small craft carrying many missiles. Led by Finnegan (Treat Williams), the small vessel is injured when it crashes into a rescue boat dropped from the liner. As they lose fuel, they see the stranded ship and decide to board it in order to fix their engine. To their surprise, they find no one on board, but pools of blood are everywhere (Event Horizon, anyone?). Soon, things turn deadly, as strange noises begin erupting from the walls, and some of the survivors are murdered. Finnegan discovers the survivors, and the main plot is set up. The rest of the film is the run-of-the-mill cat-and-mouse fight, with the humans trying to get back to the smaller ship. But the monster won't have it.
It's films like Deep Rising that make you realize what Hollywood is capable of doing. With all the technological advances, Hollywood still manages to produce duds like this one. If it isn't apparent in any other film, audiences should be able to see the lack of originality in this one. I really don't think anything in Deep Rising is original, right down to the special effects. The stunts and action sequences are pretty much standard these days, ranging from the underwater swim scene (ripped from another horrible film, Alien Resurrection) to the indoor jet ski chase (from the much better Hard Rain). The special effects mostly consist of computer generated images that Jurassic Park originated. However, ever since Titanic, movies these days need to elevate the quality of effects. Sure, monster films will always be produced, but some of the effects in this film are downright stupid. The underwater monster, which has no apparent form because it can move literally everywhere, stretches the boundaries of reality. Of course, this isn't reality, but I was never sure what it really was. It looked to be a mass of slimy goo with some mouth with claws. Also, how many of them were there? Sure, Aliens never bothered with these sort of details, but it also had a prequel which was able to give us a foundation of information on which to enjoy it. The special effects also were able to create some surprisingly effective sequences involving the digestion of human bodies. Unfortunately, this is mostly just to gross people out, and it works.
Perhaps the most apparent thing wrong in Deep Rising is the lack of suspense and direction. Director Stephen Sommers has crafted a very poor B-rate movie. I mean, it's so bad it probably isn't even qualified to be called a B-film. Sommers does manage to create some eerie moments when the cast is walking slowly around the ship, trying to find a way out. But most of this has been done before, and much better. Sommers also likes to rely on the old "ten-count" rule. My two friends were able to get this one down pat: they would both start counting down from ten to zero when a cast member was walking around alone. When they reach zero, the monster would jump out and scare the cast member. Try it sometime, you will see. Sommers, however, doesn't even get good scares with this method. Usually a director will be able to startle the audience, but there was nothing scary about this unshapen monster wandering the ship. Of course, I blame this on the writing, which gives us horrible characters and even more horrible dialogue. Sommers was obviously trying for humor with zany one liners, but most of them don't succeed. Instead, they make the particular person on screen look really stupid. If you want a comparison, this writing is worse than Lost In Space.
Deep Rising is rated R for extremely graphic images of decaying and dead bodies, nude photos, harsh language, and blood, gore, and entrails. There really is nothing to recommend about this film. The only reason I gave it the half star higher was because of Famke Janssen's witty delivery of her lines. Janssen seems almost out of place, and hopefully she will recover. After seeing her in Goldeneye, I hope she gets something more meaty than this performance. If Hollywood keeps expecting us to watch films like this, I suggest that they mature a little more. Then again, it seemed that most of the audiences members watching this film weren't mature enough to know how bad it was (they ranged from ten to fifteen years old). All I can say is, this one should have stayed dead in the water. NOTE: the final scene of the film resonated of sequel, but thanks to the poor reception of this one, there won't be one. At least we can thank God for that.