Sea Ghost - Il fantasma degli abissi

This film's plot is a rehash of Alien. Only here the evil critter is not found in outer space but fifteen miles under the Earth. Of course the US Government wants this thing, and wants to keep it hush hush, God knows why. Of course it gets loose on the oil platform where it was pulled out of the ground from and mayhem ensues.

One of the many problems is, the group of characters boarding the oil rig is straight out of the movie cliché handbook. The haunted leader, the bald black man, the inexplicable hot blonde chick, and the eccentric guy, who in this case thinks he's Butch Cassidy (including hat and six shooter).

Another is, this was made in Canada and many of the actors portraying Americans speak with a Doug and Bob MacKenzie accent, kinda weird eh? On the plus side, there is a far too long strip tease sequence performed by what looked to be an up and coming porn star (this accounts for my second star).

They obviously had some money to spend but the lousy acting, hokey cartoon alien and woeful, annoying "on the nose" dialogue drag this thing deeper than the underwater tomb their monster allegedly came from.

I am writing this review to warm others about this film. This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Do not waste your time. As a friend of IMDb and my fellow movie commentators, I am sure that if this ever made it to the cinema, it flopped and the makers got rich from the 'bad movie' insurance because the box office receipts could not have exceeded fifty bucks. I am surprised the makers weren't picketed. The CG was just plain awful. There are scarier monsters in Super Mario from Nintendo. Don't even try to put this junk in the league with Leviathon, Deep Star Six, Deep Rising etc. which I would rate as pretty good 'B' films. It just may be worse than 'Plan 9 from Outer Space'. If I mentioned any details, I may be accused of adding a spoiler, but I won't even waste my and your time 'cause this flick is not spoiled, it is rotten to the core. The concept, even though played so many times and to a much higher level of sophistication, may have been OK with much improved CG, dropping the nudie scene, and a script re-write.

Don't even waste your time unless you just want to take a peek for curiosity sake. If you do more than peek and hang to the end, I hate to say it, but you gotta get out more.

I have seen better acting in sixth grade plays. And better sets. And better productions. You get the idea. Its the lamest movie I have ever watched. Fortunately I didn't pay for it at a rental, came across it on TV and only watched it because at first I thought it was Saturday Night Live or something making fun of the movies. The people who are part of this movie should be blacklisted and not allowed to be part of any movie ever again! I feel like calling my cable company and demanding a pro rata share of my monthly bill back for them putting such garbage on TV. If you see this movie on, unplug your TV! That being said, I think some "B" movies make fun of themselves or the genre. Or some, like Shawn of the Dead, are really funny. The problem with The Thing Below is more serious, everyone seems to think they are making a real movie of interest and entertainment. Sometimes I wonder what the old guys, like Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling (Twilight Zone), who are masters of suspense, would have done if they had the technology and special effects to add to their craft.

This movie and its twin Deep Evil (2004) (TV) are painful to watch.

I won't go into too much detail or reiterate what others have written. I did watch the whole thing but my excuse is that I was watching this in the background while on the computer.

I kept on having deja vu while this played and I just could not put my finger on it - cheesy CGI, less than enthusiastic acting, and some other details.

The overall idea, some of the effects, scenery, bio-hazard outfits, black eyeballs, and "lumpy" skin all looked too familiar - I looked up the cast and crew for this movie and Ah ha! I had seen Deep Evil (2004) recently. They share so much: plot, effects, and one of the writers. Who knows maybe some of the footage got mixed up on the cutting room floor? Don't bother with the movie. Watch paint dry. (Or watch both movies and compare, for fun!)

*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*

"The Thing Below" is a completely unnecessary movie. I didn't need to see it and no one needed to spend two seconds making it. In fact, I would dare say that no one should have even thought about making it. I rented it expecting a cheap "Deep Rising" rip-off. It's a sad day when your movie watching hopes are dashed because they weren't low enough. I thought mine couldn't possibly get any lower. A "Deep Rising" rip-off was asking too much? Yes. Yes it was.

"The Thing Below" starts off with the usual B-movie scientists doing stupid things in an isolated setting. This time they're on an oil rig and let loose The Thing Below. A cargo ship arrives to check out the situation. Then the movie spins off into oblivion as the monster is not a beast with fangs, tentacles and other cool monster appendages but some sorry telepathic creature that can read your mind and exploit your fears, hopes, dreams etc. This leads to a scene where the monster turns into Glori-Anne Gilbert so it can do a strip tease for one of the crew members and another scene where there's an Old West style shootout (?!). I'm sure once the filmmakers saw the quality of their monster special effects, (terrible, awful, etc), they decided to take the telepathic creature route. It didn't really matter which monster they chose because there's no suspense, no thrills and pretty much nothing below. Well, nothing worth getting excited about that's for sure. Any way you look at it, this movie needs to be tossed away and forgotten.