One of the innumerable 1989 underwater science fiction horror/thriller/mystery films that just exploded, this is probably the worst (that I’ve seen).

I have seen The Abyss a couple of times though not recently. It’s clearly the best. I was pleasantly surprised by Deep Star Six if only in comparison to Leviathan, a movie I’ve seen way too many times. (10 times?) I have yet to see The Rift (which came out a year after the rest of them). Lords of the Deep made me go raise my IMDB rating of Leviathan, which should give you some idea of what I think of this movie.

This movie has many problems, not the least of which it seems to have actually been inspired by what the filmmakers thought The Abyss was about. (The story goes that all of these films were created to capitalize on James Cameron’s latest idea and Cameron took forever to finish his film.) It’s biggest problem is that it’s extremely dull. It also has a considerably lower budget than the other films I mentioned, which makes it much easier to laugh at.

But it’s, like, not the worst movie ever made. It’s more of a film than many bad movies I watch, even if those story elements are stolen from other movies. (Weirdly, including one film that hadn’t come out yet. It’s as if somebody really knew what Cameron was up to. Cameron’s idea was old so it’s possible somebody had seen an early version of the story.) Some of the characters have motivations and there is an actual plot. Yes, it looks like a cheap Star Trek knock off, but its look – specifically, the sets and the outside of the station – are one of the two worst things about it. The other is the dialogue, which is pretty awful.

But I’ve watched a bunch of pretty terrible movies recently and this is far from the worst. It’s just aggressively not very good.

3/10

PS There are few “hey it’s that…” in this one, which is fun. As well as at least one guy who just really looks like someone.