Deep Rising (1998) Review

 "Can you just get asthma?  Or do you have to be born with it?"

-Joey Pantucci



A group of mercenaries plan on robbing and sinking a luxury cruise ship, but when they get aboard, they find most of the passengers dead.  Something is lurking in the depths and now the real treasure is escaping with their lives.


What Works:

Deep Rising is a dumb creature feature/action movie and it doesn't try to be anything else.  And you know what?  I respect the movie for that.  It's a lot of fun.  What more can you ask from a movie like this?

There are some really great action sequences in the movie.  Before we see the monster that is attacking our heroes, we get a few sequences of it attacking while staying completely underwater.  It reminded me of movies like Jaws and Tremors.  We get some really creative practical effects and exciting moments because not seeing the monster forced the filmmakers to get creative.  

We also get a sequence where our survivors are driving a jet ski THROUGH THE SHIP to escape the monster.  That's hilarious!  Who came up with that!?  It's so over-the-top that I love it.

There is also some really great gore.  This movie mostly relies on CGI for the death scenes, but there are two scenes where we find some bodies that have been partially digested.  It's gross, gnarly, and awesome.  

Kevin J. O'Connor is in this movie as the comic relief sidekick.  I only know him from his role as Beni in The Mummy.   The characters are similar except Beni was a villain and this time he's more heroic.  I really like O'Connor's quirky performance and it's fun to see him take a very similar character to Beni in a different direction.

Finally, there is a fairly large cast here and what's interesting is there are several factions, each with different goals.   It adds an extra layer to the movie beyond just surviving.  The interpersonal conflict is solid here and that always makes movies more interesting.


What Sucks:

This movie came out in 1998 and the CGI is just awful.  It's to be expected, but still.  It's straight up embarrassing at parts.  I wish they had used more practical effects.  It would have helped this movie age.

Some of the mercenary characters are pretty obnoxious.  Luckily the worst offenders die early on, but they are extremely one-dimensional and that one dimension is awful.

Finally, the script needed some fine-tuning.  There is some clunky and repetitive dialogue and not all of the humor lands.  


Verdict:

I wasn't expecting much from Deep Rising, but it still managed to deliver.  It's a fun creature feature with some exciting sequences, solid gore, interesting character interactions, and a fun performance from Kevin J. O'Connor.  The CGI is awful, some of the characters are obnoxious, and the script isn't great, but Deep Rising has still got it going on.

 7/10: Good 


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