La créature des abysses

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.

I don't get this. The movie obviously has a pretty good budget. It has very good cinematography. It has nice pacing, good editing and pretty good directing too. Then WHY OH WHY didn't they hire someone to do a final rewrite of the script so it would not be so damn cheesy and WHY OH WHY did they hire such lousy actors that can't act their way out of a paper bag? This movie could have been good. At most times it LOOKS good and FEELS good but in the end, you realize that the movie was no good at all.

So I would say it's a good production but a bad movie. Too bad actually.

And eels? Come one, really!

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.

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.

Sci-Fi Channel offers this lugubrious, insensitive and heavily-orchestrated North Pole would-be horror flick that is just slow enough to irritate and flashing enough lights to induce a kind of I-Don't-Care-to-Get-It epilepsy.