Review of Deep Rising

Introduction

Deep Rising is a monster/horror action thriller set in the middle of the ocean which features Treat Williams (Things to Do in Denver When You`re Dead ) and Famke Jansen (Goldeneye, House on Haunted Hill, X-Men).

Williams is a smuggler who agrees to take a band of heavily-armed mercenaries to the middle of the ocean without asking any questions. Meanwhile, the world’s plushest cruise liner is on her maiden voyage, passengers unaware that they are about to be robbed by the mercenaries. However, the passengers don’t get robbed as a very nasty deep sea monster gets there first and eats them all. Upon arrival, the mercenaries face a battle to get off the ship alive.

Video

Video comes in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and is of an above average quality throughout. There’s nothing spectacular about the picture – it’s clean, in general free from grain and stable. Despite a large number of dark scenes there are no compression problems.

Audio

A major annoyance here, and one that immediately docks marks from the audio score – the Region 2 version of Deep Rising features only Dolby Pro-Logic, rather than the 5.1 mix available in Region 1 – a very poor show from Entertainment in Video.

As a result of the matrixed soundtrack, the dialogue is not as clear as it should be, and there is limited reduced frequency rear channel action. For an action film with such potential for good sound, this is disappointing.

Features

There’s a trailer and featurette on the disc.

I sat down expectantly to watch the featurette, expecting some interesting material on the monster, or the sets used…but to my horror found that it’s shorter than the trailer! – a mere 1 minute 51 seconds, some of which taken up with clips of the trailer and titles! A total waste of time.

Conclusion

Well, to briefly summarise, Deep Rising is an average monster thriller with some dodgy acting, some dodgy one-liners but still manages to be relatively entertaining.

The action on board is well shot, with good effects and sets - despite some of the characters over-acting which leads to some of the scenes losing any dramatic tension and becoming more like a comedy. Williams has plenty of one-liners to fire off through the film and the beautiful Jansen is has little to do other than look pretty and hold a gun during the film.

Good visuals are let down by the Pro-Logic soundtrack and woeful extras, so unless you can pick it up cheap, don’t bother - although it`s probably worth renting.

Also a word of warning on the R1 release - whilst featuring a 5.1 soundtrack, the video is non-anamorphic...so you have to pick between the picture of the R2 release or the sound of the R1 version.