The Abyss (1989)

⭐6/10

This is the James Cameron movie about deep sea exploration. I actually learned during the submersible fiasco last year that Cameron is a researcher himself, has the record for the deepest manned dive, and spent like a million hours exploring the Titanic. A true Renaissance man!

This movie is kinda sci-fi/ fantasy drama. I say kinda, because holy crap did this feel like 2 movies in the worst ways. On the one hand, this felt like an extremely tight, grounded exploration movie about a group of ragtag oil drillers called into a rescue mission. Cool! It is a 2 hour movie that was super solid, and if it ended there, I feel like this movie was an 8 or so. But then it also had the cheesiest, clumsiest final 40 minutes tacked on afterwards that you have to see to believe.  What happened to this movie?? One of the strangest pivots of all time. 

So I'm pretty conflicted. This felt a lot like a Spielberg movie, and I feel like that's a high compliment. It was smart, engaging, had interesting enough characters. All the effects were practical, because this is the 80s, and this movie actually looks phenomenal as a result. It's this cool one-location movie that reminded me of Jaws, or Close Encounters, or maybe even Space Odyssey or Interstellar. 

Actually Space Odyssey is a pretty good comparison. But where that opens the imagination at the end and feels artful, this one closes the imagination and feels like he passed the script to a 16 year old. 

Weird movie. Very good, and very bad.