Deepstar Six (1989)
Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Starring: Taurean Blacque, Nancy Everhard, Greg Evigan, Miguel Ferrer
Primary genre: Science fiction
Secondary genre: Horror
This aquatic Alien (1979) clone sounds initially promising but Sean S. Cunningham’s sloppy execution really … sinks it to the depths of the Atlantic ocean. Despite reeking a b-movie charm, the film copies hard the Alien’s team dynamics in their underwater research station. The script by Geof Miller and Lewis Abernathy frankly has no meat and when the monster gets loose after a whooping 50 minutes(!), we are being subjected to tedious scenes of the cast fixing things and sprouting pseudo scientific and engineering mambo jumbo at am extremely slow pace.
The lack of a central protagonist or a character with any sort of arc makes things worse. Switching constantly perspectives between members of the very large research group seems to be aiming for a The Thing (1982) type of paranoia and claustrophobia only to be neutered by extremely stupid deaths caused by their own free will. And we are not talking an 80s slasher stupidity like going out to investigate a strange noise or something but by electing to perform terrible decisions and mistakes in a perilous situation. Maybe Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012) took cues from here.
“Eat this, you big sack of fish shit!”
The alright production design is not enough to cover for a badly conceived monster whose appearance and disappearance makes no sense considering its size. How on earth people can miss it in a small flooded room is beyond human comprehension. You could forgive all the aforementioned flaws if the characters were entertaining, there was some nudity, or glorious OTT 80s style gore. ,Yet Deepstar Six is unexpectedly tame, most people do not even die by the monster and when they do, it is not glorious, it is lame.
Its telegraphical direction fails to make use of the vast and scary environment that the ocean can be culminating in a finale that resembles Friday the 13th (1980) - another Cunningham vehicle with its teleporting antagonist. Flicks doing thalassophobia right (Underwater (2020), Deep Blue Sea (1999)) are fondly remembered no matter the amount of flaws they carry due to our primal fear of “there is something in the water”. As far as aquatic horror goes though, Cunningham’s film is stupid and boring. Watch instead its sister movie Leviathan (released the same year), the aforementioned Deep Blue Sea or the ultra gory ride of Stephen Sommers’ Deep Rising (1998).
Underwater ruin
+Ok production design
+Aquatic horror premises are always good
-Subpar acting
-No central character-Lame kills
-Idiotic decision after idiotic decision
-No tension