peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2021 01 14 TheAbyss

The Abyss

Thu, Jan 14, 2021./noise/movies | Link

James Cameron completism. Perhaps this was the best he could do with an Avatar/Aliens interpolant in 1989. The plot is similarly hokey and implausible, which wouldn't have bothered me given the amazing staging and cinematography if it wasn't weighed down with too many Chekhovian devices that go off entirely predictably. Moreover there's lurv almost as strong as that in Interstellar. Visually it's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but underwater. Ed Harris was far better elsewhere, and Michael Biehn nowhere near what he was in The Terminator.

3.5 stars from Roger Ebert in a video review.