Now this is a weird film! I've never before seen a made-for-TV movie give me two distinctly different experiences. For starters, the good...
The special effects are, as stated above, not just decent, they're pretty damn good! Especially the underwater sub sequences which are quite believable, and the spectral look of the main sub was nothing short of excellent. Which leads me to think the production values couldn't have been that bad if they'd spent so much on getting the effects just right.
The story as well was full of potential, which kept me tuned in for just about an hour to see how it would pan out. The premise kept me intrigued as it reminded me of a few similar movies, mostly Event Horizon.
...Oh God how I wished I WAS watching Event Horizon by the 55th minute! Whilst that is dark and brooding, this is light and fluffy - yes even the apparently gory scenes! The bit in the medilab was hilarious, after the apparently gruesome death the ex-cop came in and immediately said "no clear spot in the blood splatter, he was alone!" - Christ why isn't she on CSI? They'd solve their cases in a 30 minute slot instead! The opening sequence introducing Grieco was, almost without doubt, the biggest load of God-awful crap I've ever witnessed. For a moody, troubled, hard-as-nails, all-action hero he didn't half resemble a good solid piece of timber (make-up, mannerisms and dialogue!). The bad guy wasn't much better "put ze vomen in front of ze door" he says meanacingly in a dubbed fashion in front of the wobbly red immovable 10" thick steel door, 'oh God NO!' we scream, until we realise they go there fairly eagerly...and there's only three of them - actually there's only five hostages in total!! But glory of glories the special forces arrive, standing 3-4 feet behind the cardboardy-steel red tubes for cover, shooting from the hip with their magic bullets, you know, the ones that hit the bad guys in the shoulder and they die instantly! But I persevered and the following bit with the debriefing wasn't half-bad acted, and introduced the intriguing storyline quite well.
However, the character introductions were all over the place, they recruit the geek in the style of the movie S.W.A.T., then you expect to see the remainder of the crew introduced in the same fashion (a bit formulaic but whatever works!), which I'm sure was the scriptwriter's intension until he realised he'd spent too much time setting up the geek the blonde and Grieco. Hence the cringeworthy boardroom scene where the boss points at the 3 other new faces and basically says "oh yeah, you're also taking him, him and her with you!"...ridiculous considering the other 'her' was a fairly integral character due to her past experiences with 'bad mojo'.
After about an hour I noticed that the story wasn't exactly moving that much, they'd been on the sub for about 20 minutes and were in the process of fighting back a medieval horde with their hi-tec (or hi-tat!)plastic, made in Taiwan guns, but hadn't made any actual progress whatsoever, except emotionally between the two girls! There was no feeling of urgency at all, and there was a distinct feeling of 'cleanliness' and a severe lack of bodies around considering that the entire crew of 38 had apparently been massacred.
I've just lost an hour of my life to this film due to it's promising nature, which is what's so disappointing - it's OK if a movie's basically crap, you can just switch off, but this one promised to get going so many times but ultimately let me down through poor direction choices, wooden acting by the leads, and a terrible, terrible dialogue! In conclusion, don't watch this on a Saturday night, you'll cry as you'd have missed a night out on the town for it! Try a Monday or Tuesday night so you won't feel so bad about it! Promising movie, fairly good storyline, excellent special effects let down by a dodgy cast, direction and script. It may not have been the most expensive thing ever made, but judging by the high standard of the special effects, they had enough money available to have produced a much better quality product than what eventually materialised...by all means watch it, but it's your funeral!
