Main cast: Milena Radulovic (Dr Anya Fedorova), Nikita Dyuvbanov (Nikolay), Vadim Demchog (Dr Grigoriev), Kirill Kovbas (Peter Akuznetsov), Sergey Ivanyuk (Major Sergei Mikheev), Albina Chaykina (Kira), Artyom Tsukanov (Egorov), and Nikolay Kovbas (Yury)
Director: Arseny Syuhin
The Superdeep is a Russian body horror film (it’s called Кольская сверхглубокая if you want to show off your movie trivia skills at parties, and no, don’t ask me how to say that out loud), but the version I am watching is in English. I wish I’d watched the Russian version, because the lines in English are devoid of emotion, like people that only have an academic knowledge of the language reading aloud lines from a sheet of paper without feeling what they are reading. This cold distancing effect between the dispassionate live delivery and the urgency of a scene makes it hard for me to get into the movie.
Now, in Russian there is a lovely scientific experiment called the Kola Superdeep Borehole, when their scientists decided that it would be great to see how deep they can drill into the Earth’s crust. It’s only about nine inches in diameter and over 40,000 feet deep. Now, the people behind this movie have not only increased the size of the borehole into much, much bigger and deeper, they present it as a front for a top secret, sophisticated mad science laboratory that could rival anything found in those Resident Evil movies. Naturally, things go wrong, and a team led by soldiers and scientist Dr Anya Federova are tasked to go down there, clean up the mess, and retrieve important samples so that the Russians can continue their mad science elsewhere.
Sure, this movie has elements that will appeal to folks that like deep dungeon horror films such as the first few Alien movies, The Thing, those deep sea monster movies that were big in the 1980s, and what the heck, those Resident Evil movies, but The Superdeep ends up being tad muddled and off in its execution.
The language issue that I have aside, I find myself also thinking that this movie would have been better off released some 30 years ago, when people would be far more forgiving of bad science. My goodness, it doesn’t bode well for the quality of the scientific community of Russia if Anya were supposed to be one of their top epidemiologists, because this person commits one grave boo-boo after another. Like the idiots in Alien: Covenant, she doesn’t wear any protective gear while handling mysterious and potentially deadly airborne pathogens. She also doesn’t advise the people assisting her to do the same, and when she finally decides to gear up, it is only plot armor that keeps her from falling afoul like those poor sods. The bad science also extends to the biology of the pathogen that serves as the monster in this movie, but by that point, my brain has shut down in protest and I just go with the flow.
The lighting of this movie often works against itself. Far too often, the scenes are too bright, which doesn’t just kill any hint of tension in the atmosphere. It also reveals that… well, let’s just say that, from looking at the set and the props, it’s pretty clear that this movie isn’t bankrolled by parties with deep pockets. It is only later in the movie, when the action and horror finally ramp up, that the movie remembers to dim the lighting a little to evoke some suspenseful atmosphere, but perhaps not dim enough, as the special effects meant to showcase the ultimate body horror in this film just come off as rather fake-looking rubbery props and suits. I’m not saying that a movie needs to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to cut it, mind you. I’m just saying that maybe better use of lighting and discretionary camera angles could have made the fake-looking effects look more terrifying.
The twists and turns taken by the plot won’t surprise folks familiar with this genre—corporate bad, or in this case since Russia is a communist country, government bad because all they care about is using a dangerous new species as a biological weapon, even if it makes zero sense to do so when this dangerous pathogen is vulnerable to cold. What’s the use of a biological weapon that is incapacitated in various parts of the world at various times of the year? Maybe these Russians just have it out for the people in the Middle-East or something.
Some of the Russian actors here are pretty easy on the eyes, though, especially Nikolay Kovbas, and I love how this movie still manages to shoehorn in a scene just to get the lead character to end up in panties and a tight top. If only these generous giving moments were enough to elevate the rest of the film, really.
At any rate, The Superdeep is forgettable flick that is better off functioning as slot filler in a streaming channel, which of course is what it is. Perhaps I’d like the Russian version enough to overcome my other issues with this movie, as the line delivery disconnect is really distracting, but still, I feel that there are better variations of this movie out there.
