Gods of the Deep

So I had to put in my two cents. I should have known better. Once they're magically the submersible (@ 16 mins in), using a collapsible light weight aluminum ladder from Home Depot it gets worse. This is a joke, the set design of the sub couldn't go underwater, much less 37,000 ft.. The acting gets really bad once action scenes start. Skipped thru another 10 mins or so .... then deleted.

I'm a sucker for any flicks which are above or under the seas or oceans. This ain't no "The Abyss (1989)", "All Is Lost (2013)", "In the Heart of the Sea (2015)", Into the Blue (2005), The Guardian (I) (2006) or The Perfect Storm (2000) to name a few of my favorites.

Cheers.

Plot

When a daring mission leads a deep sea submarine team into a mysterious opening on the ocean floor, they uncover a lost underwater world and awaken its ancient race of otherworldly beings.

Cast

The cast, no clue.

However it's made by the same chap who made Vampire Virus, Winterskin, The Barge People and Deadman Apocalypse so I've seen plenty of his stuff and to mixed results.

Verdict

What is it with Lovecraftian-esque movies that seems to render them almost all entirely terrible? For this reason I expected the worst going in, but that cover art really got my attention!

British made but surprisingly not an ITN film, you can tell straight out of the gate the budget is minimal but it does it's best to get over this obstacle.

When they went under water and we get our initial "Action" I was conflicted. I loved what they were doing and applauded their effort but it looked ropey and don't even get me started on their using a generic filter and not even trying for any kind of underwater effect.

Then it all goes downhill, they throw the concept out the window and deliver a very bland horror that can't even be called Lovecraftian.

Points for effort, but simply not enough.

Rants

I love Cthulhu, I love the old gods, I have a degree of megalophobia and therefore such movies should be amazing to me. Why do so few deliver? And when they do they tend to keep it on a considerably smaller scale due to the lack of budget? I have no faith in Hollywood anymore especially when it comes to horror but I'd love to see what they could do with a large budget and a decent Lovecraftian script!

Breakdown

Decent concept A degree of effort was put in Certain areas don't have any effort at all Concept gets thrown out the window about a 3rd of the way through.

Not sure why they require 600 words now. Maybe just to reduce the quantity of people reviewing - or the quality of people reviewing. Anyway! This movie is like a college project. I read somewhere that they had a budget of three million dollars, mostly spent on catering I would guess. Not one recognizable face. The props were found at the local hardware store. The scientific principles - aren't. But like many "Sci-Fi" efforts, you have to wonder how, in the movie, they selected the participants for such a seemingly demanding mission. How emotionally unstable are you? 'Look, a squirrel! Let's kill it!' "Yes, you'll do." Rubber monsters, no CGI, sub in a bathtub. Thank goodness for Fast Forward. I made it through the movie in about a half hour. I heartily recommend you spend far less.

Imagine Prometheus combined with The Abyss and set in the H. P. Lovecraft universe of the Cthulhu mythos. Now make it with the budget of a few first year film students' pocket money and also their skill so far and you get Gods of the Deep.

You can't really blame these people, can you? What would you do if you had a dream, but had no idea how to make it happen? You experiment. You try to copy what you know, hoping that some original thought will make an appearance and propel you into your movie celebrity career. It doesn't matter that the actors you can afford can't act or that the sets you can afford are basically a cellar somewhere that you must make look like a submarine. What matters is to put something out there that is not completely crap. And, by the old gods, they succeeded. This is not crap!

On the other hand, it's not much better either. Everything in the film is derivative and the story is really really weak. Hint to future "experiments": first you write it, then you (and as many other people as you can find) read it and only if you like it and they like it do you continue with adapting it into a movie. Because somehow, probably determined by the success of such powerhouses of suck as Marvel, people have got it into their heads that movies and books are different and separate forms of art. No, they are just forms of medium for storytelling. The storytelling IS the art. And unfortunately here, they failed miserably.

And it was almost endearing to see how seriously the film was trying to promote itself because it was starring the famous Rowena Bentley. Only she was not famous. That was pretty funny.

Bottom line: if you consider this the first attempt in a series of incrementally improving projects, then it was a success. Kind of like Elon Musk's first exploding rockets. It promises the possibility of actual film making down the line. If this was their best effort, though... well, it kind of sucked.

OK, the good. It looked like the actors tried to make this watchable. They didn't try too hard, but they tried. The camera work was also acceptable. Sorry, not much more to say good.

I wanted to like this movie, I really did. But as soon as they needed to show anything beyond scenes sitting in a conference room, the props, staging, and general direction were HORRIBLE.

The most obvious thing is the director was completely clueless. Anytime he was oblivious to what would actually happen in a situation he would shake the camera. And wow, the 'really cool, cutting edge' technology was SOO bad. To the point that the hatch to the submarine was a trash can lid! ... and it closed the wrong way!!! You make a movie about a submarine and you never saw a single submarine movie??? Do just a LITTLE homework.

I can write pages about how bad this movie was, but that might give the director hints on how to make his next movie better. Instead, I would strongly consider another line of work.