After reading many reviews, I've come to the conclusion that this film has very few if any objective reviews. I'm surprised at the number of reviewers that absolutely hated this movie, I suspect that at least some of them were expecting a sci-fi movie and not a horror movie, or were overly affected by the faux gore and edited the rest of the film out of their minds.
I first watched this film in 1998 on pay-per-view shortly after its theatrical run. It's a mostly solid psychological terror flick with a great cast, but at the end it really falls flat.
The buildup of dread is exquisitely crafted for a while, as the trapped characters begin seeing illusions of their worst fears come to life. One entranced character almost dies during these opening sequences, though it seems as if the Hellish presence of the ship is just toying with them at first.
These sequences all work great. I've not felt such film-induced dread in a while, since most slasher/startle flicks fail in every way to truly scare me. However, when they find out that the old crew slaughtered one another it starts to get really shlockey.
Act 3 of this movie unfortunately is really a let-down. They drop the whole psychological terror/illusions of the mind motif in favor of a Doom 2 style showdown. Sam Neil becomes Satan, and Lawrence Fishburn beats him up with a CO2 scrubber. Satan seems more upset about the ship blowing up then I would have expected, but what do I know.
If the dread buildup would have continued, I could easily give this film 10 stars, but the last 20 minutes are just shlock.
I first watched this film in 1998 on pay-per-view shortly after its theatrical run. It's a mostly solid psychological terror flick with a great cast, but at the end it really falls flat.
The buildup of dread is exquisitely crafted for a while, as the trapped characters begin seeing illusions of their worst fears come to life. One entranced character almost dies during these opening sequences, though it seems as if the Hellish presence of the ship is just toying with them at first.
These sequences all work great. I've not felt such film-induced dread in a while, since most slasher/startle flicks fail in every way to truly scare me. However, when they find out that the old crew slaughtered one another it starts to get really shlockey.
Act 3 of this movie unfortunately is really a let-down. They drop the whole psychological terror/illusions of the mind motif in favor of a Doom 2 style showdown. Sam Neil becomes Satan, and Lawrence Fishburn beats him up with a CO2 scrubber. Satan seems more upset about the ship blowing up then I would have expected, but what do I know.
If the dread buildup would have continued, I could easily give this film 10 stars, but the last 20 minutes are just shlock.