THE ABYSS

		Review by E.C. McMullen Jr.
THE ABYSS - 1989 USA Release: AUG! 9, 1989 Lightstorm Entertainment, Pacific Western, Twentieth Century Fox Rating: USA: PG-13

I don't know about you, but there are times in my life when I saw a movie I enjoyed, that I'd later see again and enjoy even more. I'd wind up buying it and every time I see it I still enjoy it and every time for more or different reasons.

And -

There are also those times I saw a movie that I didn't like, but after some time of thinking about it, gave it another chance and I enjoyed it, even to the point of eventually loving it.

And -

Of course the opposite is also true. There are times I enjoyed a movie, only to discover that it didn't hold up to repeat viewings.

Yet -

There are times I didn't like a movie, but due to a friend's encouragement, I watched it again only to find that I disliked it even more.

When it comes to movies I'm firmly in the J.C. camp of John Carpenter and James Cameron. They've made movies that not only endure through the years for me, but have become my definition of what cinema should be.

Yet -

They aren't all winners and after putting it off for decades I decided it's long past time to write a review of THE ABYSS.

Which means I had to watch it again.

A U.S. Navy submarine, deep sea and on a routine course. Suddenly radar picks up something odd. Something is moving toward the sub and it is fast.

The crew listens. It sounds like nothing they've ever heard. No sea life makes that sound, certainly nothing man made.

Whatever it is its moving faster. Submarines have all manner of sensors but what they didn't have in 1989 was a way to put actual eyes on visual confirmation. All they see is a bright dot heading toward them on a graph.

40 knots, 80 knots, well over 100: Nothing we know can move that fast underwater and then, whatever it is, passed the sub.

The worst is yet to come as the sub is caught up in that powerful undersea wake and 156 human lives inside the tube go spiraling out of control off into the depths of the ocean, crashing against undersea mountains.

Because this is James Cameron, whether on a giant movie screen or my TV, I nearly feel the panic the actors convey through their characters.

It doesn't hurt that I was in the Navy, so to a point some of this resonates with me.

This is James Cameron's THE ABYSS.

Remember: Every single James Cameron movie is a love story.
The entire story is only building up to the moment(s) where
either of the two characters will show just how far they'll go for love.
There are no exceptions to the Cameron Rule.

As blind luck would have it, an experimental submersible drilling rig called Deepcore (experimental because it's manned instead of automatic) is nearby. Like remote controlled automated systems, Deep Core sits on the ocean floor where it connects to the well and pumps the oil from the bottom, up through a long flexible "umbilical" hose to the floating platform above it.

An emergency rescue mission has to be cobbled together fast and since there is no one with the necessary equipment who is closer, who can get to the sunken sub sooner, the oil company that owns the equipment, Benthic Petroleum, is more than happy to work with the military.

The same cannot be said for Virgil "Bud" Brigman (Ed Harris: COMA, THE ALIENS ARE COMING, CREEPSHOW, NEEDFUL THINGS, WAKING THE DEAD, MOTHER!, GEOSTORM, WESTWORLD [TV]), the boss of Deep Core.

They have all of the expensive robot rigs and piloted submersibles you could want, but Bud won't risk his crew, who aren't trained in deep sea rescue.

As a young man seeing this for the first time in the theater, my first reaction to that was,
'This entire crew living on an underwater rig at deadly pressures, with everything they could possibly need to perform deep sea rescues, aren't trained in deep sea rescues? What if they need to rescue a crew member or, you know, the entire Deep Core rig?'

Then the oil company executive up top on the oil platform promises three times their pay to participate in the operation and suddenly everyone is ready to rock.

READY TO ROCK?

How can they do a job they aren't trained to do?

Again, seeing this for the first time I was appalled at these inhuman cretins who, when faced with an emergency life or death situation, wanted to negotiate human lives for padding their wallets.

You know, like criminals negotiate the lives of their hostages.

At this point you want to see the crew die. So what did James Cameron do?

HE WROTE THESE FOLKS AS THE "GOOD GUYS".

So who are the bad guys?

The Navy SEAL rescue team, of course.

The team is led by Lt. Hiram Coffey (Michael Biehn: THE FAN, THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS, RAMPAGE, THE SEVENTH SIGN, TIMEBOMB, JADE, CHERRY FALLS, MEGIDDO: THE OMEGA CODE 2, PLANET TERROR, THEY WAIT, PSYCHE:9, BEREAVEMENT, THE VICTIM, JACOB, THE NIGHT VISITOR, THE GIRL, SHE RISES) and since he and his team are risking their lives to save others, but they are also military, he's the bad guy.

It gets worse when a woman named Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio: AMOK, GRIMM [TV]) enters the picture.

Lindsey arrives by helicopter along with the SEALS and, however long their trip was, they already don't like each other.

The crew of Deepcore discover that Lindsey is topside and coming down and nearly all of them from Lisa (Kimberly Scott: FLATLINERS, BODY SHOT, BATMAN FOREVER, BATMAN & ROBIN, IMPOSTOR) to Lindsey's estranged husband on Deep Core, react to the news with revulsion.

In short order Lindsey makes it clear that Deepcore is her personal project that she fought for four years to achieve, and it's more important to her than human life itself.

Lindsey is specific when she says this, meaning any human lives that are not her own are expendable. She also despises her estranged husband for agreeing to take on this rescue mission, calling him a coward.

Rescuing people is Cowardly?!?

It is to Lindsey.

Rescue people? I built this oil drilling rig to get rich!

The oil company, working with the government, is forcing Lindsey's hand. The only reason she is here is to make sure that no one hurts her machine, as she knows it better than anyone. She is angry, despises everyone, and would rather let the sailors on the submarine die than so much as scratch her pet project and cap off the oil flow.

Yuck!

Lindsey pilots the mini sub that will take her and the SEALS from the floating oil platform down to Deep Core itself. From there they will go inside Deep Core but first they must endure 8 hours in a sealed enclosure to safely adapt their bodies from ambient sea level pressure to the 57 atmospheres of pressure in the deep sea drill rig.

Meanwhile the victims must wait.

Lindsey makes it clear to the Spec Op trained and experienced SEAL (Sea, Air, and Land) team - who are SEALS and already know all of this - that, despite the pressure adjustment, it doesn't work for everyone and some folks can still succumb to HPNS (high-pressure nervous syndrome - again SEALS already know all of this. It's the unclassified part of their training. SEALS are trained for rescue missions for this very thing).

It's during this 8 hour period that Deepcore (Deep Core?) caps its oil well, frees itself from its moorings and, still connected with the floating platform far above, is towed via Lisa in the Flatbed submersible 22 miles to the edge of the ocean's ledge at Cayman trough where the Navy sub, USS Montana (not a real Navy ship name at the time) waits far below.

Let's review that last bit.

Lisa pilots the main mini sub as the tow vehicle.

Deepcore is moving toward hellacious hurricane Frederick, its floating platform - far above - in tow. Why is Deepcore attached to a narrow flexible pipeline attached to a crane on the floating platform? They're not pumping oil, so what possible reason is there for that?

Communication feed? Well that's nice but pretty dangerous. That umbilical only has so much tolerance (give) and moving two separate craft 22 miles, for eight hours, under two distinctly separate stressors - one near the bottom of the ocean floor so deep that sunlight can't penetrate, and the other floating above on the ocean's surface, battling rough seas and heading for a storm, all clearly shown in the movie - is a pretty dangerous proposition.

But its okay if something bad happens, a narrow gage comm cable could run the length without doing damage to either craft in an emergency. Should it break under stress, the worst that would happen is communication might have to be carried by Morse code to each other. Perhaps by tapping on the inner hull of either craft.

Wait. How does that last part work? Time for a

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
If anyone in cinema is unusually hard core on getting the science right, it's Writer, Director, Producer, James Cameron. So the SCIENCE MOMENT is right at home here.

Have you ever watched a World War II movie where the sailors on the submarine far below the surface, as deep in the depths as they can go, still have to be absolutely quiet so the enemy ship on the surface cannot detect them?

That's because at most decibel levels (dB), and up to a given point, the denser the matter a sound has to travel through, the farther that sound can travel. So sound travels better in a liquid medium like salt water than gaseous medium like air (salt water being 800 times denser than air at sea level). The less dense the atmospheric gas, the less far sound can travel until you reach the vacuum of space where no sound can travel.

That's just as well because at only 90 plus million miles from our mind bogglingly massive star (size relative to us): a cosmic body that is in the daily process of (basically) exploding billions of times a second, if our planet's atmospheric density reached all the way to our sun, we would be instantly pulverized by Sol's shockwaves.

Would you like to deep dive into the minutia of the details? Sure You Would!

8 hours later and Lindsey exits the pressure chamber along with the three man SEAL team. During that time its apparent that she has only made morale and matters worse between her and the rescue team and, save for her uncharacteristic (at this point), sisterly affection toward Deepcore crew member, Jammer Willis (John Bedford Lloyd: C.H.U.D., THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE [2004], THE KILLING FLOOR), she is the second most damaging thing in this movie since whatever it was that sunk the U.S.S. Montana.

The SEAL rescue team is on a focused mission: to save however many people are left alive on the submarine. Because of that, the rescue team of SEALS neither care or have time to waste with the Deepcore crew's manufactured drama and endless accusing questions.

Because of their focused, no time to waste attitude, the rescue team is looked upon unfavorably by the crew with most of the grief coming from both drama queen Lindsey and the third most damaging thing, the boyish man child, Hippie (Todd Graff: STRANGE DAYS), who accuses the rescue team of every vile thing he can think of for no other reason but that he gets off on it.

Bud: "Hippy, you think everything is a conspiracy."
Hippy: "Everything is."

Never mind that these SEALS are only there to save human lives and the Deepcore crew doesn't care if the survivors aboard the Montana all die. The members of the SEAL team don't get triple pay. This is their daily hazardous duty.

It's because the SEALS and the crew of the Montana are military, that Cameron painted them as the villains: Just because.

Meanwhile the crew of Deepcore, who all put money over human life, are the good blue collar workers who are being put in danger, for a job they only chose to do for a fat paycheck.

So far in this story, I like Cameron's Villains and hate his "Heroes".

This only gets worse when Lt. Coffey develops High Pressure Neurological Syndrome (HPNS). This doesn't come out of nowhere, either.

When we first see the initial effects of it on the man, there's nothing said because the syndrome and its symptoms were explained in awkward exposition movie conversation, so we the audience are onboard with it.

Michael Biehn provides great silent moments of show don't tell: something Cameron excels in as both a writer and a story teller, and Michael excels in as an actor.

Then it's ruined when this SEAL exhibits worsening behavior and obvious symptoms. His own SEAL team can see it and dialog already made it obvious that they know how to recognize it.

Crew members like Lindsey ALSO see exactly what he's going through, even point it out to each other in private AND, instead of compassionately aiding the man and his team mates through what is driving him mad, she chooses instead to exacerbate his illness by cruelly mocking and humiliating him and his symptoms in front of his team.

Not kidding.

Lindsey purposefully chooses to sanctimoniously drive Coffey - a man she knows is dealing with a temporary though potentially deadly mental illness; a man who is risking his life to save human lives under the most adverse life-threatening conditions - (something Lindsey wants no part of and is angry she has to assist) over the edge into violence because he is, after all, inferior to her . . . In Her Mind.

W? T? F?

Then, THEN Cameron has Lindsey, of all people, be the enlightened heroine of wonderment as she becomes the Chosen One of those creatures that intentionally killed the submarine crew.

BUD: "Uh... Uh Lindsey? What are you doing?"
LINDSEY: "I wanna... I wanna poke my finger in its head and taste it!"
BUD: "Wha...? Wait! WHAT?!?"
LINDSEY: *Deep Sigh!* "Relax, 'Virgil'. Nothing is ever wrong when I do it"

W? T? Flying F?

James Cameron wanted this to be his 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and all of the cinematic fascination that James Cameron is known for, from the lived-in realism to the special effects, to the extraordinary attention to the smallest details, made me feel fully immersed in his world.

However, if Cameron approached any director's vision of a first contact movie, this was less Stanley Kubrick 2001 and more Stephen Spielberg CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.

Anyway -

Kudos for bringing that meticulous "Cameron look" actually goes to Production Designer,
Leslie Dilley (ALIEN, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, INVADERS FROM MARS [1986], THE EXORCIST III, CASPER, DIABOLIQUE [1996], COLD CREEK MANOR) who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on THE ABYSS, and -

Anne Kuljian (FATAL GAMES, CHERRY 2000, SPACE RAIDERS, HARD ROCK ZOMBIES, FLATLINERS, THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS, SPHERE, MINORITY REPORT, EQUILIBRIUM, WAR OF THE WORLDS, MR. BROOKS, THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, DIVERGENT, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE, GEOSTORM).

Composer Alan Silvestri, who thankfully wasn't required to be on set, brought the aural wonderment and tension.

Then despite all of the hard, exhausting, and risky work by Cameron, the cast, and crew, James destroyed it all with his characterizations and over-the top moralizing.

LINDSEY: "Coffey looks and he sees hate and fear, Bud. You need better eyes than that."
BUD: "Coffey sees hate and fear because he's suffering from HPNS, and you are intentionally pushing him into a psychotic breakdown that could kill him and jeopardize our lives."
LINDSEY: "'Virgil', I already told you that nothing is wrong when I do it.
I won't warn you again."

It's all just so unnecessarily mean-spirited, vicious, and hateful while it hypocritically preaches love and seeing the world through "better eyes".

Yet those "better eyes" involves committing homicide!

For me THE ABYSS doesn't get better with every viewing, it just keeps getting worse.*

Ugh! Three barely earned Shriek Girls and none of it for the script.

This review copyright 2020 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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For those who scroll...

That's my review of the original Theatrical version.

If you watch the extended Special Edition, you'll see that Cameron wanted to make his "good guy aliens" into genocidal maniacs, ready to commit an all surface earth life holocaust on a scale never seen in the annals of human history - and they were supposed to be Good for doing it!

For a metaphor that doesn't spoil the Special Edition ending, imagine that a primatologist told you, "I'm so sick of seeing different groups of chimpanzees fight and kill and eat each other so much, that I'm going to wipe all chimpanzees from the face of the earth! More than that, I'll wipe out their habitats and every living thing that co-existed among them!"

I would hope that doesn't seem "enlightened" to you?

Amazingly, the cgi effects of 1989 stand up to everything anyone is doing over 30 years later in 2020, thanks to in no small part to early Industrial Light and Magic legend and cgi rebel, Steve Williams (the seawater pseudopod scene). With his then partner in cgi crime, Mark A.Z. Dippé, THE ABYSS won an Oscar.

And yes, when this eventually comes out on BluRay or 4K^, I know I'm going to buy that too.

^still not available as of August 2022, and with its mediocre original Box Office performance and poor subsequent home video performance, there's likely a good reason for that.

A worldwide gross of $54,222,310 against a $70 million dollar budget, according to IMDb and BoxOfficeMojo. Bear in mind that theaters - the box office - gets half that, leaving 20th Century Fox with just over $27 million in return for their $70 million budget.

Hoping to create better home video returns, 20th Century Fox released the Laser Disk and VHS Special Edition in 1993. Anticipating at least a few extra million in advance, Fox had a theatrical re-release. Re-release of THE ABYSS brought in a staggeringly poor world-wide box office total of only $238,737 after 44 weeks.

OUCH!

Over a decade later and anticipating a BluRay release, THE ABYSS tested the waters with a re-release to a theater in Australia, where it brought in an embarrassing $316.00.

Considering that James wanted this to be his 2001, by comparison the 2018 Australian re-release of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, cleared over $743,000 in its limited weekend release.

According to box office numbers from multiple sources, the audience for THE ABYSS appears to be shrinking, not growing.
Box office figures from IMDbPro, BoxOfficeMojo, and The Numbers.

Since at least 2014, James Cameron has spoke of a blu-ray release, a 4K release, work on both already done and awaiting 20th Century Fox's release date, etc. Fox refused to do it and were bought out by Disney in 2020. As of 2022, Disney, while having work continue on Cameron's AVATAR sequels, makes no mention of THE ABYSS.

And what about that Special Edition DVD?

The double disc DVD released in the 1990s used its own software to play the movie on home computers. Unfortunately that software was InterActual's PC Friendly: Basically a Spyware program. Over the years, the software company became so scandal plagued that the service was shut down on January of 2017.

*All that said, because I love James Cameron's creativity, work, and dedication so much, even his flaws are worthwhile. So I bought the rare two DVD disc Special Edition. The movie menus are beautiful and all of the great extras are worth the price and a better experience than the movie itself.

- Though a commentary track would have been nice.

UPDATE 2024: Yeah, I did buy it.

END