Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep

Thirty years ago, Ray Reiter (Charlie O'Connell) witnessed the death of his parents by the kraken. Determined to avenge their murders, he joins a perilous high seas expedition that brings him face to face with the kraken, the guardian of the Greek Opal. Oh, and there is a crime lord involved in here somewhere, too.

This film is pretty awful. It looks like it was made for the SyFy network (and probably was), and its star power is Charlie O'Connell, the cheap version of Jerry O'Connell with a nastier voice. There is a part where they are looking for a Trojan mask. I have no idea how it got underwater, or how they had photos of it before it was surfaced (although two others exist).

Product placement from Diet Pepsi. How Pepsi felt this in any way helped their image is beyond me.

The soft pop rock totally not necessary... takes away from the film, which would have been better with a non-vocal score.

Christa Campbell appears, but this does not save the film.

I've never read JAWS by Peter Benchley but have of course seen the movie andJAWS is considered to be one of the few films that improves greatly onthe book . Much of this I'm told is to do with a large number of subplots being jettisoned in the adaptation , leaving only the main plot of a man eating shark and of the protagonists mission to kill it . One can't help thinking the producers of this movie should have done something similar

The major problem is that much of the running time is taken up with a bunch of bad guys wanting to get their hands on a very expensive Greek opal . In many ways the story resembles another Benchley story THE DEEP which might not be a problem as such but when you've got a film called KRAKEN:TENTACLES OF THE DEEP then a prospective audience is expecting a giant squid to be the focus of the story rather than humans . The producers seem aware of this shoehorning a squid attack just to remind the audience there's a squid central to the plot when in fact it's the producers themselves who obviously need reminding

As it's produced by Nu Image Films the production values are rather poor with the squid being a rather obvious CGI creation . Like nearly every film featuring a giant squid it makes a roaring sound ( Squids are mute ) and can grab people off the decks of ships ( Considered impossible by leading scientists ) and of course when someone gets devoured underwater there's a big bubble of blood rising to the surface . Not only that but biologists are all in their early twenties , have blonde hair and walk around in bikini tops thereby exposing their admirable mammary glands . One can't help thinking Nu Image Films and The Sci-Fi channel are in cahoots to get more guys to sign up to university science classes . I doubt however if anyone who worked on this film would be able to spell the word science

At one point, still very early in the film, the male lead character can be seen reading a copy of Jules Verne's legendary novel "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" and even later in the film the book is mentioned several times more. This wasn't a coincidental choice, as the novel (and even more so the classic 50's film starring Kirk Douglas) largely introduced and immediately popularized the notorious Kraken-monster. The Kraken, these days primarily known as the thing that swallowed Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean", is a gigantic type of squid that can reach a size of nearly 46 feet and reigns over the darkest depths of the sea. Normally the Kraken only lives in the Northern regions, like the cold seas of Norway and Iceland, but according to the script of this low-keyed and forgettable made-for-TV creature feature, the monster can easily also dwell American ocean stretches and it suddenly even got promoted to being the guardian of ancient Greek artifacts! For you see, the Kraken's territory in "Deadly Waters" encompasses Desolation Passage because that's where the valuable opal rests in a shipwreck, and the monster attacks everyone who sails in this passage, whether their intentions are bad (like multiple treasure hunters) or harmless (like Ray's parents). This may sound like a very interesting concept for a monstrous horror movie, but "Deadly Waters" is dreadfully boring and poorly made. I anticipated the giant squid monster to be entirely computer engineered, but it's even worse that anyone could fear, as it looks like a cute and big-eyed underwater puppy. The Kraken never looks menacing, not even when its tentacles embrace a medium-sized ship. The underwater cinematography is unclear and the monster's attacks are never properly shown, for obvious reasons. At best, we see people getting thrown into the water and pulled down to the depths. With a slight bit of luck, the water even colors a bit red. The acting performances are weak and the characters totally implausible. Nicole and Jenny hardly look like brilliant archaeologists in their tiny bikinis and Jack Scalia is probably the least convincing mafia lord ever. Why did I watch this junk, I do not know. They should make a law against the spreading of TV-movies in video stores, especially when they do not indicate anywhere it's a TV movie! Director Tibor Takács might consider a late career change, as he hasn't accomplished anything special since the late 80's, when he made "The Gate" and "I, Madman".

Not a bad story, but the low budget rears its ugly head at times to undermine the effectiveness of the movie. A lot of the plot is predictable, but the film moves quickly and takes some time to introduce characters so you at least have some involvement and know what's going on. An illustration of the low budget is when a motor boat is "destroyed," you only see this as a CGI image from a distance. (No boats were harmed during the filming of this movie.) I also love the "metal mask," that looks like a pie-tin mold.

It's another big-sea-creature-on-the-loose story, but this one actually has an unusual motive for its vicious brutality (not simply hunger), a plot twist often absent in these made-for-TV flicks. The human characters are two teams of scientific artifacts treasure hunters (sort of an aquatic version of Raiders of the Lost Ark), and they're both after the same artifact. The bad guys all wear black so you know they're the bad guys; the baddest of the baddies (and the leader) always wears black suits, even though all the action is at a beach or on the water. Every line of dialog this guy has is a threat to somebody; they could have put a sign up saying "Generic Theat in Progress" whenever he shows up. The good guys wear other colors, even in their scuba gear so you know who's who during underwater fight scenes. The creature's inevitable attacks predictably interrupt these fights, and provide for other common monster movie clichés.

Certainly not a landmark film, but OK for a watch if you like these sea monster movies, or if you have nothing better to do.

While I have actually watched the 2006 movie "Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep" once before, back when it was a newly released movie, I have to admit that I can only remember the movie's title, but not the contents of the story. And thus I opted to watch the movie again here in 2025, as I was given the opportunity to do so.

Writers Abram Cox, Sean Keller, Nicholas Garland and Brian D. Young actually put together a nice enough script and storyline. Sure, it was somewhat bordering on being a generic creature feature, but there was something entertaining enough about the narrative to prevent it form succumbing to being a generic movie.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was only familiar with Jack Scalia, Charlie O'Connell, Mike Dopud and Christa Campbell. The acting performances in the movie were actually fair for a movie such as this.

The CGI animated tentacles were pretty terrible to look at in some scenes, but looked alright in others. But to make matters worse, then the giant squid was apparently growling underwater, as there as an audible growling sound whenever it was attacking someone. That was just so stupid that it was an insult to everyone.

My rating of directors Tibor Takács and John Blush's 2006 movie "Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep" lands on a five out of ten stars.