I know what you’re thinking…you’re thinking that this movie is Ghost Ship. WELL IT’S NOT, OKAY?! This movie was the ORIGINAL “let’s steal stuff from a cruise ship, only to have things go terribly wrong” movie. It was a big year for Treat Williams. As if filling Tom Berenger’s shoes for The Substitute franchise wasn’t enough, he also got to be in a movie where his love interest was Famke Janssen! What a lucky fucking dog! Also, if it wasn’t for this movie, we wouldn’t have had Steven Sommers directing such films as The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing, or that G.I. Joe movie! Wait, I meant that we can blame this movie for the existence of those four I just listed. Except to be completely honest, I don’t remember the first Mummy movie being too awful, it’s just that Steven Sommers has built a reputation as a more tolerable Michael Bay-ish director.

If this trio can’t stop a giant sea creature, I don’t know WHO will!

Treat Williams plays some hotshot boat captain guy who is escorting a ragtag group of dudes to some huge cruise ship out in the ocean. Before the team can arrive, we see something come up from under the cruise ship and attack it, leaving it floating in the water. When Treat and company get there, they want to know where everyone is, until they start finding blood and skeletons. Once Treat and pals find survivors on the ship, we find out that it has been attacked by some deep-sea creature, and also learn that the team who hired Treat were planning on robbing the boat and blowing it up. The owner of the boat set it all up to get the insurance! The rest of the movie has chase scenes of tentacles coming after them, some people escaping, some people getting killed. How could I forget that Famke Janssen is one of the survivors who also happens to be a jewel thief? Treat, Famke, and one of Treat’s buddies/comic relief character played by Kevin J. O’ Connor blow up the boat and escape on jetskis. Of course that’s what they escape on. Once at the nearest island, they all sit back and relax, and basically say, “Well it’s a good thing all of our problems are over and we got away from that big scary monster and have nothing to worry about here on this beautiful island,” before we hear and see a giant monster destroying trees…BUT THEN THEY CUT TO THE CREDITS! Are we to assume that the characters made it out okay?! We’ll just have to wait for the sequel!

High five.

Sadly, there was no sequel to this movie. Not actually “sadly” because this movie wasn’t very good. However, I think everyone involved in this movie knew that this movie wasn’t for Hollywood, and that it was a B-Movie that just happened to be released theatrically. I’m sure everyone could also admit that the characters, dialogue, and concept were predictable and unoriginal, but hey, it was just a monster movie. Rather than trying to pick apart everything about it that was shitty, it’s easier to assume the whole thing is shitty, and only point out the good parts. Those good parts being, uh, well, I guess the background information about what this supposed creature was, and just discussing how vast the ocean was and that anything at all could live down there was good justification, as opposed to chalking it up to some science experiment gone wrong. Obviously watching Famke Janssen doing anything at all was entertaining, and Kevin J. O’ Connor really is the new Clint Howard when it comes to comedic relief weirdo characters. The effects hold up over time, and by hold up, I mean don’t look that much worse than some movies you see SyFy producing. I suppose if monster movies are your thing, this movie has some sort of cult following, but the only cult I belong to are the ones where you drink a lot of soda and then talk shit about things on the internet.

Wolfman Moon Scale