I watched this movie (well, most of it) after actually making the mistake of PAYING for it at the rental store. To explain my summary, a pearl is formed when something irritating (a grain of sand, for instance) gets into an oyster's shell, and the oyster lays down more and more layers of mother of pearl onto the particle, transforming it into the beautiful object we can wear as jewelry. This movie went the other way: a beautiful grain of an idea slowly covered with layer after layer of crap.
SPOILERS AHEAD The idea: The Sea Ghost is an oil rig drilling into the ocean floor. It's top-secret mission: attempting to reach a new source of energy at the planet's core. Drilling all the way to the core doesn't exactly make sense, but since geothermal power is a real concept this is an acceptable mistake. At 15 miles down (about halfway through the crust) they hit a cave, a cave with something living in it. This is great, because if you know your science, this tiny nugget of information has all kinds of frightening implications. If an organism were living 15 miles down (WAY deeper than any known cave systems) it most likely has been isolated for hundreds of millions of years. It may even have self-generated on its own, completely independent of life above. This organism would be as alien as any extraterrestrial, and none of our knowledge of life as we know it would apply to the new creature. While no known creature can get inside your head and make you see things, it has already been established that this thing is NOT any "known creature." This could have been scary, and I mean HP Lovecraft scary!
Unfortunately, it isn't. SPOILERS END HERE
"The Thing Below" suffers from bad directing, questionable acting, shots stolen right out of "Virus" and the worst special effects I have ever seen. The CGI is so bad that when I got my only glimpse of the creature, I COULDN'T TELL WHAT I WAS LOOKING AT! Shots of the boat and the Sea Ghost from the outside were so bad I winced every time I saw them. Visual effects should never cause physical pain.
SPOILERS AHEAD The idea: The Sea Ghost is an oil rig drilling into the ocean floor. It's top-secret mission: attempting to reach a new source of energy at the planet's core. Drilling all the way to the core doesn't exactly make sense, but since geothermal power is a real concept this is an acceptable mistake. At 15 miles down (about halfway through the crust) they hit a cave, a cave with something living in it. This is great, because if you know your science, this tiny nugget of information has all kinds of frightening implications. If an organism were living 15 miles down (WAY deeper than any known cave systems) it most likely has been isolated for hundreds of millions of years. It may even have self-generated on its own, completely independent of life above. This organism would be as alien as any extraterrestrial, and none of our knowledge of life as we know it would apply to the new creature. While no known creature can get inside your head and make you see things, it has already been established that this thing is NOT any "known creature." This could have been scary, and I mean HP Lovecraft scary!
Unfortunately, it isn't. SPOILERS END HERE
"The Thing Below" suffers from bad directing, questionable acting, shots stolen right out of "Virus" and the worst special effects I have ever seen. The CGI is so bad that when I got my only glimpse of the creature, I COULDN'T TELL WHAT I WAS LOOKING AT! Shots of the boat and the Sea Ghost from the outside were so bad I winced every time I saw them. Visual effects should never cause physical pain.