Review of The Abyss (1989) by Guido S — 12 Aug 2013

Although it may be confined to the dustbin of history as one of the movies that Pacific Rim ripped off, The Abyss is a moderately entertaining and well-acted thrill ride that plays off of its strengths-- namely its claustrophobic feel and its fascinating plot. Unfortunately, James Cameron for some reason felt the need to cram a group of completely unrelated and unnecessarily random genres in together, from sci-fi/thriller to political commentary. This appeals to a somewhat narrow audience, but if you want to see submarine divers in peril trying to prevent a nuclear warhead from detonating and starting a war with an alien species, this is the movie for you.

The Abyss tells the story of a group of divers who are ordered to help in a military effort to recover a sunken nuclear submarine from the depths of the ocean. The crew includes the usual Cameron characters-- The capable and badass female lead, her gruff and pigheaded male counterpart, the nerdy guy, the tomboy, and the nasty nasty military guy. This is where Cameron kind of loses me, as he seems to go out of his way in every film he makes to portray the military as some sort of evil force. It gets progressively more obnoxious and blatant as his career presses forwards (the most recent and obvious example being Avatar). He's just not very good at making his themes as subtle as he thinks he is, and it shows.

Anyway, this generically ragtag crew dives down to investigate, and everything immediately falls apart (as it so often does in these movies). The mean old military guy brings a nuclear warhead onto the submarine, and the tough-as-nails female lead sees aliens outside the submarine. This is where it really falls apart: Cameron just couldn't make a God damn movie without sticking aliens or some sci-fi shit in there, could he? Jesus, it's amazing to me that he made it through Titanic without having the sinking ship get sucked through a wormhole into another dimension. The science fiction part of The Abyss is ludicrous and completely unnecessary. It would have functioned as a perfectly good (perhaps great) romance/suspense thriller if it weren't for that. It was tacked on and basically killed the movie for me. In fact, why did she think that the creature was an alien in the first place? It looked just like your typical bioluminescent creature, just bigger. Do these people have no sense at all?

However, she is eventually proven right in one of the most infamous movie scenes of all time: The aliens manipulate the seawater to make a snakelike tube of water that mimics the crew and tries to peacefully communicate with them. Of course, this freaks out the big bad military guy, so he decides that the next logical course of action is to detonate a nuclear warhead in the abyss. This is another dramatic low point for the movie-- The mean, mean Navy Seal was so canned, contrived, and stereotypical it hurt. I doubt Cameron even bothered to show up to direct the scenes he was in. I don't see why he'd have to be there: All the guy needed to do was be gruff, be tough, and be crazy. And in that one-dimensional sense, he definitely succeeded.

The action and suspense sequences of this film are undeniably thrilling, but they can't quite mask its cheap and generic plot points. It pains me to say this, as I really loved some of the scenes, but a lot of this movie could easily be taken out and it would not suffer. By the way... a 2 hour and 40 minute running time? It didn't quite take a hold of my immediate attention enough to justify that amount of time spent. But even some of the suspense sequences are bad, and I'm talking extreme logical gaps here. In one scene, Ed Harris swims hundreds of feet through ice-cold water under tremendous pressure while dragging his unconscious wife (who is not wearing any respiratory outfit) to safety-- AND SHE LIVES. IT IS FUCKING LUDICROUS. SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN CRUSHED MORE THAN MY INNER CHILD WAS AFTER SEEING MAN OF STEEL. And, true to his typical nature, Cameron went through the trouble of putting in a five-minute scene in which Harris tries to revive her, finally getting her awake by slapping her and calling her a bitch. Who says chivalry is dead?

The ending also kind of demystifies the aliens in a Close Encounters kind of way, which pissed me off. The special effects at the end looked more like they belonged in Beetlejuice than in a serious sci-fi movie. Some people might give The Abyss some credit, saying "Wow, gee, I really didn't see that ending coming." OF COURSE YOU DIDN'T SEE IT COMING. It was completely random and didn't fit in with the rest of the movie. If Breaking Bad ended in a Disney special-esque way with musical numbers and singing elves, you would not give it points for being unexpected. You would rip it to shreds.

Altogether, The Abyss is the kind of film that I want to review as two separate things. The suspense I would give a solid nine to, but with the needless sci-fi add-on, it brings it down a lot. Final Score for The Abyss: 6/10 stars. This kind of kills me, because as I said, a lot of this film is unforgettable and vastly entertaining. But it never quite finds a consistent tone and jumps around a lot between reverent science fiction and cold, hard suspense. Not to mention... how did the aliens get there in the first place? Really. What the fuck? God damn you, James Cameron... still, I'd rather see a sequel to The Abyss than Avatar 2.