The Abyss (1989)

This is a stream of consciousness review I jotted down after finishing The Abyss during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college. My overall rating for the movie was 3 stars out of a possible 4. On my scale, 3 stars qualifies as "good."

This is a difficult one to rate. The script for the first forty minutes is so bad that it seems like Cameron constructed it when he was in third grade; it’s that poor even by Cameron’s low standards. The first forty minutes are also Cliché City: a nuclear sub goes down, the Army wants it back and of course have ulterior motives because Hollywood thinks that the Army is a mindless institution hellbent on contracting everything it has lost and that this action will never cease to be overused in Hollywood, there is a storm coming which will trap several characters below the surface, and there is sexual tension between two of the crew members below. After the rig loses contact with the surface however, the film takes a bizarre turn for the better: all of a sudden the acting is far superior (the rat still being the best part of the movie acting-wise), the script has brought itself to a more mature level, the stereotypical psychotics of the chief military man are drawn out and set to a unique and more dangerous sense, characters come from nowhere and pull off the saved-in-the-nick-of-time cliché without being cliché, that is, not being suspected. Perhaps the most impressive part about the story is that it achieves a depth almost to the level of the film’s setting. The decision by Cameron to make it clear that the creatures below are not threatening to the characters is clever and one that Hollywood should pursue in the future. Also, a moment of praise for Cameron’s ability to lead the viewer to assume the worst for any character put in any type of possible peril, but pull back and make it clear that this is not your typical undersea disaster movie, allowing them to survive.  With all this said, it is still difficult to argue for this movie being good. The real reasoning behind my rating has to deal with the score, which although overbearing at times and not quite matching the setting of the movie (such as the fight between Ed Harris and Michael Biehn featuring background music more suited for a fight in the jungle), fit the eeriness of the deep and correctly highlighted and illuminated the appearances of the extra-terrestrials and the visual attractiveness of the film. This film won the Oscar for Visual Effects and was nominated for two more: Art Direction and Cinematography, and for good reason; all three of these honors are well deserved, victory or otherwise. The appeal of this film really does belong in the feeling that although these characters are a thousand feet below the surface and sometimes deeper, the ocean is still fascinating and anything can happen down there. The problem with any James Cameron film is that he will give you enough reasons to disapprove of the film and then reconcile with "you, the viewer" or "you, the critic" or "you, who are both of those at the same time" and gives you an equal number of reasons to approve of the film. The problem lies in your decision as to whether his negatives outweigh the positives or vice versa. He makes this film extra difficult by ending the film on such a sour note. The alien ship ascends to the surface, surprising the search ships, whilst bringing the rig with it. Then out of the huge opening in the ship, Harris emerges and he is reunited with his wife (ah the clichés) and they embrace. But that’s it. The movie just ends there. My whole argument against Cameron being a capable and tolerable director is that he does not trust his audience; he tries to explain everything to them and will not let up until everything is sent home in a neat little box. This is the one film where this Cameron technique really needs to exist, and it doesn’t. Surely the aliens served a greater purpose than to wait there for someone to need their help, return them, and then just sit there in the water. Maybe I can admire Cameron’s lack of consistency in his main fault since his failure to progress the ending provokes the mind into two situations. The first situation is that the aliens, having allowed man to recognize their existence, remove the ships that currently rest on their aircraft and return to their home. The second situation is that the aliens, having allowed man to recognize their existence, and return back to their place below the surface, which may provoke man to explore other regions of the oceans to seek out more aliens or this may allow man to pursue a greater understanding and future relations with the aliens of the deep. And yet, although I enjoy the opportunity to make my own decision, this is one of the few times when I wish there was closure given to me rather than for me to decide. I am left disappointed in the end, this movie made such a rebound from how it started and shot itself in the foot with twenty seconds to go. But, and this is mightily important, the movie manages, as I look back at it, to hirple along as if it can survive even with its poor opening and less than satisfactory ending, and that, at least for me, is enough to give this film three stars.