Review of DeepStar Six (1989) by Henrik S — 03 Dec 2011

I'll give this movie some props, but not too many. First on my list of gripes is that it is beyond unoriginal. An unapologetic rip off of 'Alien' and about a dozen other similar films. Its not even original in the 'Underwater Alien Ripoff' genre, as 'Leviathan' and a couple others beat this to the punch already. The script and acting are mediocre to below average, the budget was obviously tiny, and suffers from completely too little monster.

Those negatives stated, it does a good job with what it has. Even though it is seriously under-utilized, the creature is surprisingly good. Sort of looks like a Predator did it with a lobster. In addition to having a good monster, the film does a good job of building suspense with a couple of pretty creepy attack scenes. Some nice gore effects (the decompression scene and the dive suit scene spring to mind) round out fairly solid effects for an 80's mid-budget monster film. I would probably have rated it 3 1/2 stars had the ending played out like its hinted at before backpedaling to a much more generic finish.

As it stands, its a generic monster movie with a good monster and a couple creepy moments. Can't say it was particularly good, but it wasn't particularly bad either.