The Rig

This horror film is set aboard an actual oil rig--one that was the first of its type and is a museum today. A cute twist is having one of the characters actually wearing a t-shirt for the museum in one scene! On the rig, some underwater beast is disturbed and comes aboard to pick off the crew one by one.

"The Rig" is a low budget horror film with very modest production values in most ways. However, in two ways the film was quite outstanding--the blood and gore was a lot more realistic and profuse than you might expect and the musical score was great and really added to the tension. Otherwise, the film is clearly inspired by films such as "Alien", "Predator" and "The Thing". The idea of an alien slowly picking off members of a group certainly is NOT original and the writing could have been a lot better (the characters sometimes seem like caricatures and the ending is weak). It also suffers some from a few stupid clichés (such as adding nudity where it is pretty inappropriate) and seems a bit formulaic. Overall, the way I see it, if you like gore and low-budget monster films, you'll probably enjoy the film. If not, you'll probably wonder why you've wasted nearly and hour and a half of your life.

During a tropical storm, an assortment of badly written crew characters must deal with the rough weather as well as a mysterious creature who finds itself aboard the rig. Whenever 4 or more writers work on the same movie script, it's usually not a great sign (if said film is an anthology that rule doesn't apply, but this is not the case here) The plot is trite, the characters somehow cliché and bland at the same time, and the film as a whole is not nearly entertaining enough to make the huge detriments ignorable. An extremely dreary mess, avoid it.

My Grade: D-

Eye Candy: Carman Perez gets topless

This movie makes absolutely no sense and was written by people who have absolutely no idea of work safety regulations... people die all the time on that drilling platform and the staff acts like if they simply deserted - there is no emotion, no stress, no documenting what happened, just sex scenes and stupid dialogue.

I understand they had no budget, but that no excuse for lazy writing and pathetic acting. Roger Corman made movies on shoestring budgets but never sank that low.

I'm surprised the director ever found another job.

You know the boring parts of a porn that you just fast forward through until the "actors" are done talking? Well that is this entire movie! I'm talking about bad lighting, awful dialog, terrible editing (scenes are drawn out way too long, with awkward moments of nothing going on), and unforgivable monster attacks that show too little of a monster that looks like it was made in a middle school art class. I can't believe the cast and crew were even able to see this thing through to completion. The only reason I gave it 3 stars instead of 1 is for the brave men and women who selfishly destroyed their reputations for the sake of not giving up on something you started. One star movies are filmed with a cell phone in a junk yard, at least they got someone to rent them an oil rig.

THE RIG is another nondescript monster-on-the-loose story, made foul by an almost non-existent budget and a distinct lack of imagination. Indeed, the paucity of creative energy is evident in this film's paint-by-numbers script, which tells exactly the same kind of story as has already been done dozens of times before by better directors with bigger budgets.

In this one, the crew of an oil rig find themselves menaced by a monster from the ocean floor, although there aren't many explanations on offer. It all boils down to a man in a rubber suit – or what looks like a child in this case – running around and killing overacting cast members in slapdash ways. Attempts at poverty-row gore effects are pitiful and the acting from the no name cast is even worse, not that it mattered when the characters are so clichéd to begin with. The only actors I recognised were THE BRING remake's Art LaFleur and OUT FOR JUSTICE's William Forsythe, neither or whom can readily be described as stars.

In the end, the things that really bring THE RIG down are the lack of money and the lack of experience on the part of the director. It just looks cheap and cheesy throughout, and not in a good way. There are no surprises, no well-directed scenes of suspense or action, just a mindless mess of watered-down and hackneyed scenarios done before and better.