Here is a horror movie that most people could forget ever existed. Released in 1998, it tells a story of a mercenary who, accompanied by a "grease monkey" Joey and his hot Asian girlfriend Leila, transports a gang of raiders to a luxury ship named the Argonautica. This maritime horror movie further reveals that the ship is soon to be invaded by an undersea monster which resembles a kraken and has a taste for human flesh. The luxury vessel is worth $487.6 million and the owner Simon Canton is behind the plot to claim insurance rather than lose it to bankers.
This movie consists of plot devices anyone would have figured out were already present in movies before it, such as Jaws (1975), Alien (1979), Titanic (1997) and even Anaconda (1997). Several other movies that I have not mentioned are surely subject to have their plot devices ripped off by this movie, but I shall not solely dwell on that.
Just like Anaconda, there are several characters who will just be served up on a silver platter for a swarm of tentacles, which are all of the kraken's sentient arms. The characters are just cardboard cutouts who just serve to be so annoying and unlikable that you would wish the tentacles would just have them devoured.
So the start off with a prologue, which sounds like the legend of the Bermuda Triangle yet it is set in the South China Sea. After that the see the ocean floor from a point of view I think many would affiliate with Jaws.
Now we are out of the water and in a boat which is piloted by Mr. Finnigan (Treat Williams), who has already shown how much he is of a wisecrack. However, his wisecrack is less of a pain than the grease monkey's whiny nature. Mr. Finnigan's favorite catchphrase in this movie is "When the cash is there, we don't care." (I think of this of the catchphrase of every actor desperate for money to survive, no matter the critical and financial outcome.) He must think he doesn't care, but always asks the question when the mastermind is out of the scene.
One other character is Trillian St. James (Famke Janssen). I do have to admit, this character here has more charisma than a comic character from the X-Men trilogy (2000 - 2006), Dr. Jean Gray. She is a convict, and a woman with a feisty attitude. When I first saw her, I was completely lost as to where I have seen her before. This actually indicated that when I have seen the same actress somewhere before but could not put my finger on it, it just goes to show that if the character is bland and forgettable, so will the actor except if their name is billed. But here she is built up to a strong female character who will not wait for a man to come to her aid, rather the other way round.
The Argonautica is a very expensive ship. It boasts state-of-the-art surveillance yet it could not record the perpetrator who somehow uploads a virus into its mainframe. It is this malfunction that leaves the ship open for attack in the middle of the ocean.
The sentient tentacles (and the monster itself) are animated with the least impressive C.G.I., and this movie came out the same year as the infamous Godzilla, which has been ridiculed for its poor-quality CGI despite its big budget. You might consider this a shortcoming, however they do a hell a lot of destruction when they suck up their victims. What makes this movie truly revolting is the detail of the horror it literally leaves behind: blood-coated skeletons. The thought of this is enough to print a nightmarish image in one's mind. However, the very image that is heavily scarring is a victim who was travelling in one of the tentacles, burning in acid, screaming in agony, alive even though half his brain has been burned. Agonizing as it sounds, this movie offers something that you would not see everyday.
If you have watched James Cameron's Titanic, you will notice how the passengers are thrown about in the bowels of the ship when the monster strikes, a similar ordeal when the doomed vessel struck an iceberg. However, what you would not see in his movie as a woman being pulled down a toilet by the tentacle, which does beg the question as to how that is even possible.
You remember this guy, Wes Studi, from Street Fighter (1994)? He takes charge of a gang of raiders sent to storm the cruise ship in question. I have to be frank, his major roles in every movie involves him being a crime boss or lord of any field. It is just too bad that two of these movies where he is featured are not the type of movies that attract a critical acclaim or at least positive reception. But I digress, he leads a group of trigger-happy gun runners, an assorted bunch of cardboard cutouts ready to be decapitated.
The real pain with this movie is usual with B-movies of the horror genre: the long running time before we actually see the vicious menace. Before this happens, we have to watch several characters slag each other off, shoot like drunken idiots, waste time chatting on unimportant subject matters, and even find out what is going on that nobody ever wanted to find out in the first place. In the meantime, we do have to watch the suspense that accompanies every horror movie. Before we see the monsters we watch one character after another being pulled out of the scene in a fashion that has already been pulled off in other maritime horror movies. But this does not always say the same, since it is as though the director decided that one build-up after another gets boring from time to time.
So if you are familiar with James Cameron's Alien and Aliens, you will be familiar with the setting within this very movie: the hallways and the rampage therein. Enclosed spaces and the grey tint is typical of a scene where a victim has to outrun the vicious monsters to avoid decimation.
The bottom line is this movie is far from original. While it does offer some merits as a maritime horror movie, it still fails to come up with something different after several pictures that it rips off. It offers nothing worth every penny and is forgettable in every aspect.
