Directed by:
James CameronScreenplay:
James CameronCinematography:
Mikael SalomonComposer:
Alan SilvestriCast:
Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn, Leo Burmester, Todd Graff, John Bedford Lloyd, J.C. Quinn, Kimberly Scott, Jimmie Ray Weeks (more)VOD (4)
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A civilian oil rig crew is recruited to conduct a search and rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver (Ed Harris) soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey 25,000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (14)
From a purely filmmaking point of view, this must have been hell to film in such cramped spaces. And when a chink of space appears, it immediately fills with water. But purely from a viewer’s point of view, it’s good that Cameron decided to go accept the challenge of making it. This has a fundamentally positive impact on the atmosphere. But this makes the ending all the more annoying, because Cameron is no good at presenting (selling) a message like this. The movie simply lacks even a drop of Kubrick inside it and not even the longest of director’s cuts can help.
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The best of Cameron’s work for me. Excellent direction, perfect atmosphere and a rather pleasant story, which is spoiled only by the stupid open conclusion, apparently made to order "to make it work". Otherwise, however, I consider this underwater variation on Close Encounters of the Third Kind to be one of the best adventure films made in Hollywood, to which the excellent Ed Harris in the role of the manly captain of the undersea station certainly contributes. To the aforementioned conclusion – in a special edition, it is extended and drawn into a very naïvely proclamational, but still better form. At least you'll know why these little transparent men do it all.
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Is this really from 1989? I can't believe how attractive and appealing the visuals of the film are. I'd guess 2005, too bad 80s horror films weren't as high on the technical side as The Abyss. At first I thought it was going to be a space sci-fi flick, after all it is set in a nuclear submarine (which I'm not too fond of), but luckily the film was spiced up with an alien visitation as well as a lot of other fitting elements. For its running time, the film has a decent pace and doesn't get boring. The highlight for me is the emotional resuscitation and exploration of the ocean floor by Ed Harris. The only thing I see as a minus is that the thriller psychosis didn't develop into a more vigorous massacre. 80%
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Cameron’s previous films already bore his signature and put his talent and craftsmanship on display. But The Abyss is the first full-fledged Cameron movie. He was not limited here by budgetary compromises (as in the case of The Terminator) or by a connection to a foreign franchise (as in the case of Aliens). Mainly, however, we already see here the classic attributes of his entire later, personal body of work with simple, almost banal stories about the clearly defined sides of good and evil, his ambition to push the possibilities of what could be done in the medium, and his personal fascination with the underwater world. In addition to that, The Abyss is impressive due to both its well-thought-out female characters, who were very different than the contemporary norms, and their male counterparts. Cameron is a masterful creator of illusions, as he is able to unfold and present to the audience a world that has been thought out to the smallest detail. Though he tells a thoroughly traditional story involving the central couple’s reunion, he succeeds in holding the viewers’ attention all the way to the kitschy climax, thanks to the non-formulaic dynamic of the two central characters and their gripping peripeteias. In a certain respect, the unfairly neglected The Abyss is the absolute pinnacle of Cameron’s filmography. Since computer graphics were still in their infancy at the time, he couldn’t rely on the “crutch” of animation as he has done in his most recent films, where his imagination no longer has any limits, whereas here he made every effort to create the least compromised equivalent of his space visions within the seemingly restrictive boundaries of shooting on film, with live actors and on locations. Thanks to this and his ambitious shooting, The Abyss has a fascinating realistic dimension that no digital technology can convey. The abyssal darkness encompasses the characters on the screen and merges with the darkness of the screening room, thus drawing the viewers in and letting the fascination and ever-present threat of the world beyond our everyday experience take hold of them. Thanks to its brilliant symbiosis of all of film’s means of expression, The Abyss, like Das Boot before it, succeeds in evoking an incredibly claustrophobic atmosphere even in a large screening room with only a handful of viewers. As such, we can say that the whole film actually exists for the purpose of making its climactic sequence work at the highest possible level. That sequence is one of the most dramatic and physically most intense moments in the history of the medium thanks to the fact that all elements, narrative lines and the vision converge within it and are used effectively. Cameron is no Bergman or Tarkovsky, and his descent into the abyss does not reveal any great truths about the human condition or the disturbing recesses of our minds. All of his narratives are entirely simple and actually even naïve, their core consisting of relationships and bonds between people. However, Cameron uses all of his masterful craftsmanship to bring us to our knees and convince us once again of the validity of the concept of love.
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I didn't see the film during its release in movie theaters and I only watched it now as part of filling gaps in the world of cinema. Therefore, I cannot be influenced by any nostalgia and I can easily compare Cameron's famous film with the current offerings in the respective genre. The main advantage of The Abyss was undoubtedly its cutting-edge special effects, which, understandably, lose their shine with the passing years, exposing the triviality of the plot and the hopelessness of the screenplay. Moreover, the concept of the cute aliens who wave at you in a friendly manner and are so kind that you would immediately move them into your living room really bothers me, and I am only open to it in the case of E.T. The remaining aspect is Cameron's precise direction, which earns The Abyss a three-star rating, although just barely due to its overlong duration. In the last third, the film dragged on so much that I longed for Cameron's finances to run out and for him to quickly stop the film... Overall impression: 50%. I can't help but also point out the absence of any deeper thoughts in the film. This really isn't 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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