DeepStar Six 2001 Horror Movie Review

Deep Star Six: VHS Movie Review


Grade: C+


O.K., so in the age of DVD’s, I buried this out of my VHS collection, and remembered one scene (the infamous decompression scene). Remembering watching it about 5 years ago, decided to give it another try. I now know why I didn’t remember much of it though; most of the movie is pretty much forgetable.


The plot, yet another shameless “Alien: 20th Anniversary Edition [Award Series]” rip-off, this time tries to put Alien underwater, disturbed from his sleep (hibernaton?) by a crew of explorers trying to set up a Navy Base on the bottom of the ocean floor. It gets mad, and starts (just like Friday the 13th Uncut (Deluxe Edition), another movie Sean S. Cunningham directed) picking off the crew one by one.


But the sad thing: you just about never see the monster. (Although when you do see it, I rather liked the way it looked, despite it being a rubber suit) Instead, the movie focuses more on character development, developing useless characters that just die later on in the movie, when the monster (finally) shows up.


Along with a ton of character development, there are numourous underwater shots, but its too dark to see anything clearly. Basically, nothing really goes on for the first hour of the movie, and you don’t even see the monster until the movie only has about half an hour left. (And it’s only actually on screen for a total of about a minute.)


Yet there was one thing that really surprised me: the casting. The actors and actresses were chosen extremly well, and they all play their parts like they really were trapped underwater with a giant angry lobster/crab thing.


So in the end the acting saves the movie from being a total disaster, and there are some cool scenes. (Once again, the decommpression scene.) The first of 1989’s “underwater thriller” era (The Abyss (Special Edition) and Leviathan are the other ones) Deep Star Six still manages to pack a punch, even on VHS.