Deep Shock

Last week I had some minor surgery and had to watch TV. As the previous reviewer stated the Sci-Fi channel loves putting thier 'original' movies onSunday night at 9:00. Maybe because they think no one is watching.

Lately Sci-Fi is not content to just run movies and TV shows, they want to be movie makers. Having seen most of them, I conclude they need to stop it. This movie (and it really isn't a movie, more like an episode of a Twilight Zone-like anthology series) was just bad karma from the first word.

Paint by numbers.

The script was difficult to follow. Seriously I didn't really understand what was going on for most of it. The only clues I had were the rip-off characters from the Abyss, and of course the 'arch evil' corporate, government, mad scientist (insert here) bad guy. Boy, ever since Alien 2 we've always had the Paul Reiser character in every sci-fi tale.

Anyway, the movie was as bad as it's CGI creatures, and had nothing to offer a sci-fi fan.

Near the North Pole, the submarine U.S.S. Jimmy Carter encounters some mysterious objects in the water. It is, of course, impossible for such objects to be truly unknown, so when he can't get answers, the commanding officer just yells in order to get better results.

We don't know exactly what happens, but it can be concluded that it was something terrible. The next thing we see is two scientists--Chomsky and Dr. Anne Fletcher--arguing at a United Nations auditorium over whether there is global warming.

The Hubris, an underwater station, is attacked as well, possibly by the same unknown objects. One crew member pulls a gun in an effort to stop an unwise retaliation whose results are unpredictable. And then whatever happened to the Jimmy Carter happens to them, supposedly. Chomsky, Fletcher and Fletcher's ex, Capt. Andy Raines, are on the team sent to investigate.

The airplane landing at the North Pole is kind of rough (they tell us it's the North Pole, but there's no land there in reality, and yet there is a runway with lights somewhere).

The group boards the Hubris and finds everyone dead, but amazingly, once they get the power back, everything works perfectly. Now they just have to find the cause of what happened. Meanwhile, the United Nations sees only one way to solve the problem: a full-blown nuclear attack. This includes the Jimmy Carter (what, there were two? Oh, maybe they fixed it).

The rest of the movie consists of arguments over how best to handle what Dr. Fletcher determines are electric eels from another planet who regard Earth as theirs and humans as "intruders". Communication with the outside world is disrupted and must be repaired, but it doesn't really matter because the United Nations won't listen to reason. There are some pretty exciting battle scenes and suspense as we wonder if the crew can somehow stop the United Nations.

This movie is pretty much what you'd expect, but some of it is actually better. I thought Capt. Raines and Dr. Fletcher had a couple of pretty good scenes, and Capt. Raines has a nice smile. Their subordinates provide comedy relief, and Chomsky is just a stubborn grouch.

The alien creatures look good, for Saturday morning. But this is live-action and you would hope they'd be realistic.

There is, of course, an important moral here. Aliens may not be as evil as you think, but you just have to know how to deal with them. Most people aren't that patient or knowledgeable. Not something we haven't seen before, though.

It's not too bad if you need something lightweight.

Yup... another sea creature, oil rig, military tries to deal with creature hamfistedly type straight to video affair. But if you like movies about huge electric eels resembling the creature on the cover of Asia's first album... than this is for you. Especially if you're holding a David Keith film festival. Plenty of drama and tension to be had but the cheap cg sea creatures (say that 5 times fast) are too hokey to provide payoff or menace. Not the worst thing out there for sure but it's nothing you haven't seen already in the last 15-20 years: The Abyss, Deep Star Six, Leviathan etc. etc. All that's really missing is a lesser Baldwin brother.

Well, I can only say the filmmakers tried, at least that's something... And I might also be rather too generous in my rating. But "Deep Shock" is at least worth a little bit more than its poor 1.9/10 IMDb rating (at the time I first saw it; apparently I was right, since it went up to 2.5/10 by now). The film is somewhat of a cross between "The Abyss" (1989) and maybe "Deepstar Six" (1989) and a zillion other "in the deep blue ocean" horror/sci-fi flickies. Juiced up with a lot of questionable CGI and a lame 'ex-wife/ex-husband get back together in the end' subplot. It gets a little credit for the background story that was given to the creatures and how they came to exist. But that's about it, really.

A mediocre Sci-Fi Channel original picture. A little squirmish, but not much. The nuclear powered submarine U.S.S. Jimmy Carter is on a mission deep below thick frigid ice near the North Pole when it is attacked by giant super charged electric eels. A member of the crew (Simmone Jade Mackinnon)thinks she has devised a way to communicate with the monsters, but is not given much chance for vague reasons. Also among the crew are:David Keith, Mark Sheppard and Sean Whalen. This movie could have been somewhat better if the eels/monsters were not so cartoonish.