Movie reviews: Deep Rising
Deep Rising (Stephen Sommers, USA, 1998)
Dir. Stephen Sommers; starring Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Kevin O’Connor, Wes Studi, Anthony Heald
You can’t watch Deep Rising without accepting it as a director’s wet-dream as he wallows in overt homage to the action and horror films he loves. Indeed, you can’t watch Stephen Sommers’ film without acknowledging every clich in the proverbial horror director’s manual, in so far you simply accept you’re watching a film constructed from other movie’s more prominent parts. Yet despite the lack of any sense of originality, in fact, originality would be nothing more than a hindrance here, Deep Rising is the filmic equivalent of all your favourite sweets thrown into one bag. It’s a self-referential movie that knows what it is and tries to do no more, and with its glowing-satiric humour, b-movie styling, and Treat Williams hamming it up, you’ve got a recipe for something very sweet.
John Finnegan (Williams) runs a ‘if the money’s there, we don’t care’ boat company and is hired by a mysterious man named Hanover (Wes Studi) and his short-tempered team of renegades. They head out to the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean, Finnegan not knowing where they are going or what Hanover’s convictions are, but as they near a luxurious cruise liner, Hanover and his team take control of the boat holding Finnegan and his crew, Pantucci (Kevin O’Connor) and Leila (Una Damon), hostage. Hanover and his team, armed to the teeth, take Finnegan and Pantucci on-board the ship, seemingly to rob it of its riches but they find it desolate and deserted. Eventually they find some survivors – the ship’s captain (Derek O’Connor), the owner (Anthony Heald), and femme-fatale beauty Trillion (Famke Janssen). The owner, Simon Canton is babbling about sea-monsters and that they have infested the ship, but while they don’t believe him at first, some strange events that soon take place change their minds.
Part of the joy of watching Deep Rising is the recognition of what eighties or nineties films have been ‘borrowed from’ (read: ‘ripped off’) like the subtle action sequence elements such as Treat Williams clearly taking cues from Arnie in Terminator II when it comes to opening gates whilst riding a bike. Then you’ve got the not so subtle references to Cameron’s Aliens like the elevator – the fact it has a female voice mothering its operation, and the descent the characters take into the ‘lion’s den’, and of course the commando’s themselves – the notion
Tags: B Movie, Horror Films, Una Damon