Deep Rising: Walt Disney Productions/ Buena Vista Pictures Rating: USA: R/ UK: 15/ Australia: MA
I first saw Stephen Sommers’ (The Mummy) big-budget monster movie Deep Rising right after it was released on DVD. I lived in a fairly rural area—and the rental DVD selection was pretty slim at the time. So, in order to sate my desire to play with my newest toy (my DVD player), I’d rent just about anything. Now, that’s not to say that my rental of Deep Rising was simply one made so that I could gloat about how great the picture and sound were compared to whatever video the rest of the family was watching (on boring old VHS)—anyone who reads my reviews with any regularity knows that I’m a fan of horror films, and even more importantly, schlock. Still, I didn’t have very high expectations for this one going in—afterall, I’d already seen Anaconda, a film that faltered primarily because it relied too heavily on an obviously computer generated snake. So, going in, I didn’t have my hopes up—and maybe that’s why I ended up loving the movie so much.
Deep Rising ultimately works because the film tells a relatively simple tale. A band of mercenaries (featuring Djimon Honsou and led by Wes Studi) are motoring out to sea on Finnegan’s (Treat Williams) boat. Finnegan and crew (Pantucci: Kevin J. O’Conner, Leila: Una Damon) have no idea what the men on board are setting out to do—nor do they care—which Finnegan sums up nicely with the line "if the cash is there, we don’t care." What the men are setting out to do is hijack a luxury ocean liner—which they run across roughly 800 miles from the nearest land (and damage Finnegan’s boat in the process), and find almost completely deserted. It seems the ship has run across some really nasty undersea tentacle monsters—monsters that have devoured everyone on board the boat (save for the captain, the boat’s owner, and a thief played by Famke Jannsen) and would be only too happy to dine on the mercenaries and Finnegan and crew as well. What ensues is an all out fight for survival as the well armed terrorists take on hordes of hungry monsters while trying to escape from the ship.
At its core, Deep Rising is an homage to all those classic 50’s monster films—you know, Godzilla, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc. And while it is definitely paying tribute to those low-budget B-movies of yesteryear, it’s also reinventing the subgenre in the process—taking us from a time where the monsters were all men in poorly conceived rubber suits and tossing us into the CGI laden 90’s. It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of CGI in films—I’m old school, meaning I prefer my FX work to by technicians with loads of latex, karo syrup, and remote control bladders as opposed to a room full of guys who look like Bill Gates’ nephews. Still, the CGI here looks pretty decent. A film like Anaconda attempts to pass off a computerized snake as real—which is why the CGI doesn’t work. We’ve all seen anacondas on nature shows, so we know what they look like, how they move, etc. So, when a CGI crew tries to mimic that, while making the monster move quickly, it simply looks fake—the image doesn’t jive with our reality (Deep Blue Sea had the same problem—which is why I’ll always prefer the mechanized rubber appearance of "Bruce" the shark in Jaws over the sharks in the newer film). Deep Rising never makes this mistake, because it gives us a group of monsters that don’t exist—and we have a much easier time suspending our disbelief and going with the flow as an audience.
Yet, even though the CGI doesn’t hurt the film, it’s not what makes it either. No, what makes Deep Rising so much fun to watch are the performances. Treat Williams is great as Finnegan, making me wonder why he hasn’t been in more films over the last few years. He’s got a great sense of comedic timing, seems more than capable of pulling off the action sequences, and is just a generally likable character. The rest of the cast is good too—the multi-national gang of mercenaries moves well beyond the realm of clichéd "bait" characters—even the ones who are going to die early. Still the best performance comes from Kevin J. O’Conner. O’Conner is a riot as the cowardly mechanic with a smart aleck attitude. Seriously, if anyone ever wants to make a live-action version of Scooby-Doo, O’Conner is a lock for Shaggy. The man simply steals every scene he’s in.
Director Stephen Sommers does a nice job as well, capturing the spookiness of the dark and deserted ship quite well without resorting to using cliché shots. He also does a good job of fitting the CGI imagery in with the stuff on the actual soundstage—meaning that there aren’t many scenes where the actors are clearly staring at a mark while pretending to see a monster. Sommers makes sure everything lines up—and makes the CGI far less hokey because of his efforts.
I don’t usually talk about scripts in my reviews, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Sommers’ script for this film. While no one’s ever going to make the mistake of calling Deep Rising an intelligent film, it is actually well crafted. There aren’t many instances where Sommers has a character do something stupid in order to advance his plot (which many of these films do—repeatedly). Even more impressive is the way he manages to strike such a deft balancing of different genres. There are elements of B monster movies, horror, comedy, and action/adventure in this film—but they all come together in a very nice fashion thanks to Sommers’ script.
Surprisingly (since this was a studio film), there’s a fair amount of gore in Deep Rising. One guy takes an ax to the head, monsters devour more than a few folks (spewing blood and bones in their wake), and Finnegan shotguns the rather large eye of the motherbeast in one scene. Still, the coolest effect of all has to be half-digested man one of the creatures regurgitates. This guy is missing half his head, half his skin, and he’s still alive…which makes it a gruesomely cool FX shot. Gore fans should find more than enough to keep their interest in this film.
No one’s ever going to call Deep Rising one of the greatest film’s of all time—because it’s not. Truth be told, it’s simply an updated version of countless dumb monster movies from generations past. But, it’s this refreshing lack of pretension on the film’s part that makes it so entertaining. Deep Rising knows it’s a dumb movie designed to entertain you for an hour and a half and nothing more—and that’s all it wants to be. It’s hard to find a film in today’s market that simply wants to entertain you—and actually achieves its goal. Deep Rising more than meets its ambitions. Grab a few buddies, some munchies, check your brain at the door, and check out this film—it’s well worth a rental.
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