At the bottom of the sea, a group of Navy contractors are assembling a missile silo for nuclear weapons.
After they collapse an underwater cavern, an unknown entity is released which proceeds to attack the station.
Will the crew survive the creature and make it back to the surface?
I have tried to watch Friday the 13th for years, but every time I do, I turn it off. There is something so sloppy and pedestrian about it - particularly if you have watched Halloween.
After checking out Sean S. Cunningham’s Deepstar Six, I think I will have to rectify that.
This movie was not on my radar. After watching Leviathan and a retrospective review by the Action Boyz podcast, I checked it out.
There is something simple but functional about DeepStar.
The plot is unexceptional, the acting is forgettable and the monster is somewhat botched.
But there is a cheap and cheerful zest to this movie that makes it enjoyable.
I like genre movies on a budget and this is a prime example: A couple of sets, limited VFX and a drawn-out reveal of the film’s Big Bad.
One of the elements that Action Boys pointed out is that the monster only kills a couple people - the others are killed by accident or in the course of duty.
The creature is kind of ridiculous - it seems to change size based on whatever is convenient for the specific scene. I did not mind it but I was also aware of it going in so those expectations might have fed into it.
Watching this movie after Leviathan, I think I liked this movie more. It is a case of simplicity rather than success at execution. Leviathan had a big budget, a name cast and plenty of special effects. When that movie’s narrative faltered, it felt like a bigger problem.
DeepStar Six feels more like a formula genre picture - a slasher movie filled with characters who exist to die in a variety of ways.
The prize among the cast is Miguel Ferrer, a terrific character actor who brings a sweaty intensity to the (fatally) by-the-book Snyder. The script does try to provide some individual fleshing-out, but aside from Ferrer, none of these characters stand out. They are cannon fodder of various kinds.
This movie does not try to be bigger than it is - there is a lack of pretension and a blunt functionality to the filmmaking that kept me onboard.
I watched this movie after watching a more recent attempt at a small-budget genre piece - the 2016 sci-fi thriller Morgan starring Kate Mara and Anya Taylor Joy. That movie boasts a slicker aesthetic, but underneath it all it is just a monster movie - and not a particularly original or well-constructed one.
DeepStar may not look that flashy, and its story is basically a lift from other monster movies, but it succeeds at its modest objectives.
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