Deep Rising

Deep Rising (1998)

Finnegan and his motley crew run a ship for hire, taking people where they want to go with no questions asked as long as they pay the fee. They find they might be in over their heads, however, when Pancussi, the ships mechanic, discovers that the group they are now transporting out to the middle of nowhere has a payload of torpedoes with them and is then caught nosing around them. In the meantime, on the Luxury cruise ship that the group is going to intercept, the beautiful jewel thief Trillian is caught red handed as she breaks into the ship vault and locked up. After that some mysterious saboteur messes up the cruise ships navigation systems. Then all hell breaks loose as the Luxury Liner is attacked by a giant beastie from the deep. By the time that Finnegan's ship makes it to the Luxury Liner and the group that hired him boards, taking Finnegan and Pancussi with them, the main attack by the monster is over and they find the ship eerily deserted. As they explore it they find a few survivors including Trillian, Joey Canton who owns the Luxury Liner, the Captain and a few short-lived patrons. Then the tentacled terror apparently gets hungry again and begins to attack anyone it can find, slurping up both good people and bad people alike. They find that they all have to work together to try to survive the onslaught as tentacles with mouths full of sharp teeth at the ends of them attack again and again.

This nifty little flick and one of the best sea monster movies I've seen. The acting is awesome with a top-notch cast and the story is well written. I like the characters in the movie although I would have liked to seen more of Leila, one of Finnegan's crew and girlfriend of Pancussi. The CGI special effects are some of the first really good ones I can remember seeing and even though they aren't as good as some of today’s effects they do the job well. The monster was well designed and pretty nasty looking. There are a bunch of great scenes throughout this movie. In one scene some poor woman is hiding in a bathroom, sitting on the toilet, when a tentacle comes through the toilet and grabs her yanking her into the toilet to eat her (it doesn't show this in too much graphic detail, which was a good call on their part, but you can still pretty much tell what was going on.) In another scene one of the tentacles vomits out someone who it had previously eaten. Then there is the memorable scene where the main bad guy has Karma catch up to him, you'll know it when you see it.

This is a good movie that is well worth seeing. It's got a lot of great scenes and has a lot to offer overall. It's fast paced and action packed and won't leave you feeling bored at any time.

3 out of 4

Reviewed by Scott Schwarzwalder