It’s all rumours, but the story says someone got a whiff that James Cameron was making an underwater aliens style movie and all of a sudden three major studios were preparing a movie in a similar setting. Surprisingly none of them are too bad, and while DeepStar Six doesn’t have the visual fidelity of The Abyss nor the thrills of Leviathan, it is still a movie with decent production values, and plenty of entertainment.

While Leviathan copy-pasted the Alien / The Thing successfully to the underwater theme, the decision to make DeepStar Six a monster movie seems forced and uninspiring; the enchanting, well established deep sea base would’ve provided many other more realistic and tangible threats. The monster is fairly well made and animated, but there’s absolutely nothing iconic or memorable about it. An Alien or Predator this isn’t.

The fairly unknown cast performs fairly well, but without surprises. Miguel Ferrer is a delight as the edgy and hysterical Snyder who’s the only one in the crew who seems to realise the actual weight of the situation.

80s-o-meter: 84%

Total: 79%