Force Fed Films: "The Abyss" (1989)

It’s another Thursday and Jim forces another 80’s movie on me. This time it’s the “The Abyss” starring Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Surprisingly enough this movie was written and directed by the one and only James Cameron. I can’t say I’m excited, but I was sure I’d have a good time. I’ve liked most of his other films, so hopefully this trend keeps up. But I didn’t get the ordinary version of the movie; instead I got the ‘special edition’ with a whopping run time of 2 hours and 43 minutes. And before I bore you folks out, let me get into the nitty gritty.

We start off with an American submarine being attacked by a mysterious force. This leads them to utter failure when they crash and a massive leak submerges the sub, there are no survivors. A local oil rig is forcefully chosen to help out the Navy SEALS to check for survivors in the crash. What the members of the oil rig team don’t know is that the SEALS have another plan up their sleeves. As the two sides can’t get along, they encounter a number of problems. All goes to hell when they meet this mysterious force. The oil rig members think it’s an alien, whereas the SEALS think it is a top secret Russian weapon. Can the two sides cooperate and survive, or will greed get the better of them?

I really wish I didn’t see the ‘special edition’ of this movie. The added 30 minutes of content irritated me right off. But the sad part is I am not sure what the bonus material was. I say this because there were loads of scenes that I found unnecessary and boring. It had the same problem with 2001: Odyssey, the slow action sequences. Where they would take forever to do menial tasks and all I could hear was the inside of Darth Vader’s helmet, inhale and exhale. So yes, the movie was slow, the pacing was slow and I doubt this would have been a problem with the ‘original version’.

The effects hold up, and look better than most things out right now.

What I do give thumbs up for is the special effects. Even after more than twenty years, effects didn’t look all that bad. I was amazed at the effects that took place when the aliens could control the properties of water. It sort of snakes through the vessel the crew is on, and mimics Lindsey Brigman’s (Mastrantonio) face. Even the part when Bud Brigman (Harris) goes into the alien mother ship and interacts with the aliens was great. And as much as the alien design annoyed me, it still had its coolness values.

But besides those two points, the movie isn’t all that amazing. If anything, it felt fairly generic. The characters felt formulated. You have the nerd, the leader, leader’s love interest who are in the middle of a divorce but are in love by the end of the movie, the hard ass and of course the token black woman. And the tacky moral message that was embedded in the movie was really lame. It was trying to express the message that we humans are terrible people and we are the problem to ourselves and etc. I get that this movie was filmed during the cold war, and this message was relevant than. But during modern times, the message is just annoying.

Last complaint I had, and it really isn’t a complaint so much as a thing that bugged me. And this part is fairly spoiler-ish. So skip this paragraph if necessary. When Bud drags his wife’s breathless body through a 5 minute underwater swim and tries to revive her with CPR and a defibrillator. Bud is trying real hard for 5-10 minutes to get his wife back. The moment she opens her eyes and comes back to life, I just twitched in utter cheesiness. And when I hate cheesy moments, you know it’s way too cheesy. I assume some people will find this moment inspiring and shows that true love prevails all, but I just didn’t care for it.

The mother ship was awesome!

To sum it all up in a neat package, the movie was okay, to be kind. With a few things here and there that might have made this movie a fun film to watch. It gets hampered with boring interlude scenes, slow action sequences and just the length of the movie is off putting. I am okay with long movies as long as it keeps me interested and there is some ‘epic’ value to it. This movie had none of that, just gave me heavy eyelids. I guess even the great James Cameron can make a bad movie.