For years, I have had a strange fixation with the Stephen Sommers’ film Deep Rising. When I was younger, I would catch it on Starz! all the time. I simply could not go past the channel it was on without watching it. I could never find it on DVD and my VHS copy had long since disappeared from numerous moves throughout the years. I happened to stumble across a DVD copy of it for $2 the other day and couldn’t have been happier to add it to my collection.
It has been 17 years since Deep Rising was released, so I was a tad nervous to see how well the effects had aged. Some films from that era like The Mummy look ridiculously bad by today’s standards, especially for someone like me who will never fully be okay with digital effects. I can say I was blown away with how well it holds up after all of these years. The creature design is out of this world and the seamless mix with practical effects is the icing on the cake.
The cast is wonderful and I remember now why I like Kevin O’Connor so much. His performance is the best of the bunch, but he has some amazing talent to work with from the likes of Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Anthony Heald, and Jason Flemyng just to name a few.
The story is fun and fast paced; This is such a great popcorn movie, that it’s hard to deny how much fun it really is — badasses with guns, a beautiful woman, comic relief, tons of gore, and a huge monster with an even bigger appetite. Deep Rising still ranks in my top 20 action/horror hybrids and if you haven’t seen it in a minute, you should probably get some popcorn ready and take a cruise on the Argonautica. It’s as much fun now as it was back then.
I give this film 4 partially digested bad guys out of 5.
I KNOW I’ve seen it but I simply can’t remember the movie. I do have it somewhere, maybe in the near future I could refresh my memory and re-watch it,