The year before he directed The Mummy, Stephen Sommers made another action blockbuster inspired by old horror movies. Only this one was far less successful and made much less money at the box office. Roger Ebert hated it. Wikipedia lists it as a "cult movie", but I don't see any cult. If there was a cult, trust me, I would be going to every meeting. Put me first in line for the human sacrifices in honor of this underrated should-have-been-classic.
The movie in question is Deep Rising, one of my all-time favorites. I've seen a few modern reviews call Deep Rising "so bad its good", which is really unfair. "So bad its good" is what you say for a movie like Cats, a disaster so confounding that it never ceases to fascinate. Deep Rising is a plain old good movie. If you're entertained, it is because the movie was made to be entertaining. This is effective movie-making. It isn't incompetent, it isn't cheap. Deep Rising doesn't need a cult, it needs a whole religion complete with a pope, pilgrimages, and flying buttresses.
The movie has a great script, the characters are all memorable, and the monster designs are fantastic. Deep Rising mixes together action, comedy, and horror as effectively as The Mummy. If you love that, you'll probably really like this.
The plot is an action thriller that gets abruptly hijacked by a monster movie. The cruise ship Argonautica is sailing the South China Sea when somebody on board disables its communications. The ship is paralyzed just minutes before some unknown force surging from below ("deep rising", if you will) attacks.
Meanwhile, our hero, Finnegan (Treat Williams) is transporting a group of wacky mercenaries to some mysterious undisclosed location. "If the cash is there, we do not care" is Finnegan's motto, which he and his crew quickly come to regret. The mercenaries force Finnegan on board the cruise ship, only to discover everybody is already gone. And the ship is infested with tentacle monsters with very big teeth.
Right from the start, Deep Rising sets up a lot of mystery in its plot. Beyond the usual question of "what are these monsters and how do they eat you?" the movie also has you wondering who these bad guys are, who disabled the cruise ship, and if anybody's plan involved Finnegan or his crew going home alive. It's a good set-up. The movie adds in a sexy thief, Trillian (Famke Janssen), who fits right into this gang of low-lives, con artists, and killers. Finnegan as close as we have to a moral center, and he's a sarcastic sea asshole who really doesn't need this shit right now.
It helps a lot that most of Deep Rising's cast can bring comic chops. Joey (Kevin J. O'Connor) is Finnegan's dweeby side-kick and the movie's main comic relief. He was funny enough that he got himself a role in The Mummy a year later. But everybody has their comedy moments. The entire mercenary crew is made up of character actors like Djimon Hounsou, Cliff Curtis, Clifton Powell, and Jason Flemyng. If you need slimy, Anthony Heald as the ship's owner is a great source of scumbaggery. The script is so good and so consistently funny, Deep Rising reminds me of a Shane Black movie. Treat Williams is certainly not an A-lister movie star, but he pulls off sarcastic well-enough. "Now what??" is the man's catch-phrase. He never fails to hit that note with just the right tone of tired irritation.
My one cast issue is that Treat Williams is about ten years too old for Famke Janssen. They don't lack chemistry, but I dunno. This is one of those movie romances that probably won't last long beyond the end credits.
There are quite a few dumb B-movie details to Deep Rising. The bad guys carry around machine guns that have seemingly infinite ammo. Nobody bothers to reload to the point its hilarious. Towards the end Finnegan and Trillian have a jet ski escape sequence through the ship. Finnegan has to shoot the door buttons to get them to open with his shotgun. I've never seen a movie so lovingly turn itself into a video game level. Speaking of video games, there's a big monster at the end for no reason other than to have a Final Boss.
However B-movie dumb it gets, the script is stays smart. There's a lot of details that keep the characters clever and intelligent even during a horror movie. Trillian starts the movie in a red evening gown, then changes into sensible clothes in the background while the men are screaming at each other. Finnegan catches the evil plan before the audience does. These characters are fodder for the tentacle monsters, but they're wholesome meals, not junk food.
As for the monsters themselves, mostly they're good. Deep Rising does not show the monsters at all for the first third of the movie, leaving them to kill people in well-crafted suspense deaths. (That poor lady on the toilet got it the worst of anybody.) They are a solid design, at least at first. Eventually you see that Final Boss monster that is much less scary than the regular creatures. This is 1998 so the CG effects have aged. The individual monsters look okay. The Final Boss monster looks like shit. Its death looks even worse.
However, don't think these effects are all bad. The most amazing effect is this legendary gore gag where one of the mercs falls out of the ceiling with his face half-digested. This was made in CG, with only 1998 technology, and it still looks incredible. You would almost believe it was practical effects.
Another big thing that helps Deep Rising immensely is Jerry Goldsmith's score. Maybe this would be just an above-average B-movie without it. Instead that score turns Deep Rising into a legit blockbuster.
While I'm dropping random unstructured thoughts in my giddy glee about this movie, here's another side note: Deep Rising has a random lesbian kiss during a montage. Neither women are named or ever appear again. But those few frames turn Deep Rising into a better vehicle of LGBT acceptance than the entire MCU.
So if it isn't clear, I love Deep Rising. No, it is not better than The Mummy, but I still love everything about this movie. I'm still laughing at the jokes and I've seen this movie probably twenty times. The action is thrilling. The suspense holds up. There's one crazy good gore gag. It has everything a movie should have, everything that should be thrilling audiences decades later. Just there is no audience. If there is no cult or organized religion, I'll be the Pope of nobody in the Deep Rising faith. I could gush for hours, even if it is to nobody.
By the way, that is definitely King Kong at the end, right?
Next Time and Final Time: Night of the Demons (1988). We're having a Halloween Party, Jason and Freddy are too scared to come.
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