Gods of the Deep

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.

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.

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.

My family has a thing for watching B movies and this one was a barrel of laughs for the most part. Do not take this movie seriously but please enjoy it. Acting aside this movie has a plethora of entertaining set pieces and design. From your submarine standard collapsible hatch ladder, garbage can lid hatch cover, and extendo grab hands attached to their little submersible is just the bare minimum of fun set design. There's so many more that entertained us enough to see this move through to the end. While the monster does next to nothing while they're busy squabbling amongst themselves it mostly roars going unnoticed or worried about by the majority of the crew. Fun to watch if you're in it for laughs.

The movie is a B movie with a very low budget. Nevertheless, it was somehow fun to watch until the winged creature showed up that cannot move but just trying to move his hand up. However the best scene is when they decided to smoke cigarette in a submarine that is under 37.000 feet. In fact they smoke it with passion. The scenario is basically a combination of Call of Cthulu of HP Lovecraft and the Aquaman so folks there is nothing new. The high votes to this movie were given rather by trolls who have so much time or people who are related to the production team. Do not waste your time and watch other staff such as The Abyss an oldie but goldie !