BEFORE: This film (and tomorrow's) got stranded last October when I found out that Jessica Henwick's scenes got cut from "Godzilla vs. Kong", I had to scramble at the last minute to find another way to get to my Halloween film, thankfully I had sort of a back-up. I just wish that Hollywood directors would consult me more often before editing people out of their films, last-minute changes can really screw me up. But see, it's OK because I've circled back to it, which encourages me that anything I don't get to this year, I can maybe get to next time. My horror film list is a mess right now, I think the longest chain I can form out of it is 15 films, but that could change, more films will be added to the list over the next few months, and I'll try to forget about it for a while and then work my linking magic on it next spring, which will give me the whole summer to figure out how to get there.
Kristen Stewart carries over from "Lizzie". By my count it's 5 films until Halloween, 20 films until Thanksgiving, and 30 films until Christmas and the end of Movie Year 14.
THE PLOT: A crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep-sea drilling company try to get to safety after a mysterious earthquake devastates their research facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench
AFTER: Well, maybe sometimes a film needs to sit on my DVR for an extra year, it needs to learn its lesson, be trained not to be bad. Too bad the process doesn't work that way.
I had trouble staying awake during this film, so I had to rewind several times to find that spot, about 25 minutes in, where I kept drifting off. But this is perhaps a fine example of a movie that actually could be improved by falling asleep. That's the way I recommend watching it, in fact.
This story plays out like the early "Alien" films, just set at the bottom of the ocean instead of in outer space. It's also set in the future, some year like 2050 when humans have to resort to drilling in the Mariana Trench to find oil, so I assume that they emptied out every other place on Earth? Like, why else would they set up a drilling station at such an unreasonably deep spot, where the water pressure is so great that the building could collapse at any given moment? Explain how this makes any sense...
Another bad sign, I found myself rooting for the sea monsters...I couldn't wait until they started picking off the survivors, one by one, as they made their way across the ocean floor (?) to the next station. If that's really what was happening, honestly it was hard to tell because everything was so dark and murky, all the time.
Hey, maybe WE'RE the monsters, just saying. We're the invasive species, coming down into the water where we don't belong, just to get those last few drops of oil. Sure, it's international waters based on our human laws, but maybe the creatures who live down in the trench don't see it that way. If that's the case, the scientists and drillers and oil-company shills got exactly what they deserved - they knew the risks, after all.
Also starring Vincent Cassel (last heard in "Becoming Cousteau"), Mamoudou Athie (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion"), T.J. Miller (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), John Gallagher Jr. (last seen in "Peppermint"), Jessica Henwick (last seen in "On the Rocks"), Gunner Wright (last seen in "King Richard"), Fiona Rene, Amanda Troop.
RATING: 3 out of 10 references to "Alice in Wonderland", for some reason.
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