Main cast: Derek Nelson (Professor Jim Peters), Makenna Guyler (Christine Harris), Kane Surry (Joe Meeker), Tim Cartwright (Captain Gordon Atkins), Rory Wilton (Hank O’Connell), Rowena Bentley (Dr Julia Goldstein), and Chris Lines (Jed Pickman)
Director: Charlie Steeds
Professor Jim Peters, an astrobiologist at the London offshoot of the Miskatonic University, has no fondness for the Pickman Corporation. His father went MIA, presumably KIA, during one of the expeditions mounted by the corporation, after all.
However, there is no escaping the well-moneyed tentacles of those folks, as they are the ones funding his research in the university. Ah, the sad state of modern day university, when one has to pick and choose one’s research based on the self-serving interests of the ones controlling the purse strings! Someone need to start an incarnation of GoFundMe for the researcher community, clearly.
Anyway, one day Dr Rowena Bentley from the foundation offers Jim an offer he can’t refuse: join an expedition to explore a mysterious portal-like structure at the Southern Ocean some 37,000 feet below sea level. Based on the photos taken by a remote-controlled sub, that structure looks almost… man-made. What could it be, hmm?
This is how Jim finds himself in the submarine Providence 3 with Captain Gordon Atkins, the engineer Hank, marine biologist Christine Harris, safety and communications officer Joe, and Peter Weyland Jed Pickman himself.
Oh, and the submarine is the first of its kind to travel that deep in the ocean, and tests have supposedly shown that it’s okay for real time use, which makes these crew members the first and hopefully not only people to take it for its first run into the ocean.
What can go wrong during this merry jaunt into the deep unknown?
I read somewhere that this is one of the most expensive films, if not the most expensive one, that Charlie Steeds has a hand in… well, doing most of the work in and I can believe that. This movie obviously doesn’t have a huge budget, but at the same time, it’s put together very well in a manner that reminds me of Roger Corman’s ability to put together a pretty decent-looking thing from a shoestring budget.
In a way, this is a spiritual successor to Freeze in that it has a number of the same people in it as well as a Lovecraft-ian theme. However, the theme here is more overt as it throws in Cthulhu, color out of space, tentacles, and the obligatory everyone’s going cray cray party. Unlike that other movie, however, this one utilizes these elements in a manner more faithful to the source materials.
On the down side, this thing is probably tad too faithful to the point of being clichéd. Honestly, there is nothing here that I haven’t seen before, which means this movie is just one more in a long line of submarine or spacecraft horror films, whether it’s Monster from the Ocean Floor or The Abyss or Event Horizon or Underwater or even freaking DeepStar Six or… anyway. It’s not terribly by any means, but it doesn’t exactly stand out from all the other movies of its kind.
Also, the main characters are a disappointment as they mostly react to situations and are generally not exactly bright. Even considering that they may be panicking and hence can’t think clearly, they still do plenty of dumb things like not trying to find a way to get out when the sub is clearly going down—the resident asshole, and there’s always one in every movie of this kind, is the only one with the brainpower to think of this—and wanting to break open parts of the sub and likely blow the whole thing up as a knee-jerk reaction.
At the end of the day, it’s nice that Mr Steeds is adding to the catalog of cosmic horror films available out there, but this one, while watchable, hardly engenders enthusiasm or excitement in me. I’ve watched it, I’m okay with it, and that’s pretty much it.
