Deep Rising

Brainless monster movie making at its best!!!

Deep Rising wears its heart on its sleeve. It knows that it is complete tosh, and has the courage to not pretend to be anything else. If director Stephen Sommers had managed to make 2004s Van Helsing this much fun he'd have managed not to blow quite so much of Paramount's money.

On the maiden voyage of super-luxury-liner The Argonautica the liner is attacked by Pirates transported to the ship by the reluctant Treat Williams and his crew. Little do any of the parties concerned know that the spot they have chosen is right on top of the lair of a particularly large, nasty and ravenous sea creature! The robbery goes wrong and soon Pirates and crew must band together against a monster that has taken a distinct liking to the taste of cruise liner food!


Make no mistake, DeepRising is as daft as it sounds, but no less enjoyable for this. The cast, Treat Williams, Wes Studi, Anthony Heald, Kevin J O'Connor and the lovely Famke Janssen have a ball. All of them have, quite rightly, decided to have as much fun as possible. Treat Williams makes for a likable rogue who against his better judgement has embroiled himself and his crew in the whole mess. His amiable presence along with the very funny Kevin J O'Connor and Famke Janssen give the movie a nice heart around which all of the bad language, violence and gore circulate without seeming too unpleasant. Lesser character actors would have made this a far nastier movie.


The effects are fabulous. Both jaw-dropping in their execution and high gore factor. They are from the mind of Rob Bottin, the man responsible for the hideous creations in John Carpenter's The Thing. Deep Rising's creature is no less original or revolting and I wonder, if whilst Bottin was working on this, if he secretly wished for the technology available to him for this movie way back in 1981.


The DVD is a bit of a mixed bag. Good 2.35:1 anamorphic picture with little grain, except during the opening credits sequence. A Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack fails to give the punch a 5.1 mix (available on the R1 version) would have, but crank up the volume and it won't matter too much with plenty of ambient effects to be found.
Only a trailer and a 2 minute epk featurette make up the remainder of the extras. This is a real shame as I know that other material was filmed regarding the making of this movie having seen it on various Stunt and Effects TV shows. Maybe EIV and Sommers may get together to produce a more comprehensive version one day (yeah, right!).

I have a real soft spot for Deep Rising. It is daft, but daft in the best way. The DVD won't win any awards, but it was released in the early days and still sports a good anamorphic picture over R1s letterbox version which is, I think, reason enough to buy it. See Deep Rising. Enjoy what Stephen Sommers is capable of if he doesn't try too hard, and also one of the best realised monsters ever committed to film...really!!!