User Reviews

**Spoilers ahead** This movie is retarded, the actors, director, and whoever did the special effects should be sent to a desert island forever. They throw in a nude scene with a porn star throwing her gigantic breasts around and pouring oil on herself in a room full of fire. This is probably where all the budget for the special effects went. The awful acting, pathetic CGI and the stupid storyline make this the worst waste of 94 minutes ever.

But the movie is a lot of fun if you like to make fun of movies mystery science theater style.

Anyone who gave this movie more than 1 star is too generous. Run and hide.

The Thing Below starts aboard a US Naval ship called the Semenza which is transporting a top secret alien specimen to Maryland during a tropical storm which causes an accident & the alien organism to escape & cause a catastrophic explosion & sinking the Semenza. The top brass & the president back in Washington start crapping themselves as another alien specimen still remains on the Sea Ghosy, a top secret Government oil-rig that has been used for deep sea drilling in search of a new energy source. Sensing the potential danger a team of sailors come hard as nails mercenaries lead by Captain Jack Griffith (Billy Warlock) are dispatched to the oil-rig to assess the situation & clean up as necessary, joining them is scientist Anna Davis (Catherine Lough Haggquist) & slimy back stabbing Government man Dean Rieser (Peter Graham-Gaudreau). Once on the rig they find the alien creature loose & it has a taste for human flesh...

This straight to video piece of crap Canadian produced sci-fi horror film had the working title It Waits Below, was shown on cable TV as Sea Ghost, was bizarrely pitched as a sequel to Ghost Rig (2003) here in the UK & was retitled & released on DVD as Ghost Rig 2: The Legend of the Sea Ghost & was released on video in the US as The Thing Below which was executive produced under the name Noble Henry & directed by Jim Wynorski under one of his other many alternate names Jay Andrews & to be quite frank is utterly awful both conceptually & technically. The whole film feels so lame & just randomly cobbles together all sorts of plot points from other much better sci-fi horror films such as The Intruder Within (1981), The Thing (1982) & Aliens (1986) & is so bad that out of the three people it took to write this god-awful crap one went uncredited & the other two hide under pseudonym's like Wynorski did. There are so many plot holes it's just not funny, I mean this alien creature is known to emit radiation so strong that it could kill 100 men yet the greatest scientific minds the US Government can conjure up decide to put it in a glass tube so weak it breaks when dropped on the floor, why does this alien creature spend so much time & effort creating elaborate hallucination's for it's victims when it could quite easily just kill them straight away which it eventually does anyway, why can the creature seemingly change size & shape at will, why does the US Government insist on sending in a team that know nothing of what's going on, wouldn't it help if they did know at least a little bit about what was going on & what they might end up having to face? Also before I run out of space there's loads of clichés like the unearthed alien, a bunch of character's trapped with it on a remote location, Government cover-ups & conspiracies are thrown in here & the makers even have the nerve to set-up a sequel with an awful twist ending (that comes after the awful ending in which the alien takes human form, speaks perfect English & explains itself & it's origins to the survivors for some reason) that left me worried that one might actually emerge one day. The Thing Below is simply awful, it's overlong at over 90 minutes, the film suddenly switches genre from sci-fi monster film to low rent porn to cheap western to so bad it's laughable drama to an action war film set in Iraq(!) that destroys any sort of flow the film might have built up.

So the script, pacing, narrative, logic & flow of The Thing Below is awful but the pain doesn't stop there as besides conceptually The Thing Below is also technically abysmal too. For a start there are scenes from other films edited into The Thing Below, & badly edited too as they don't match the footage shot for the film itself anyway. The most recognisable footage is stolen from Virus (1999), not that it matches as the footage used is of the boat tugging a barge along which disappears between certain shots. Footage from Deep Evil (2004) is also badly edited into the film. Ther also seems to be lots of annoying stock footage of US army ships & helicopters taking off used as well. I suppose I should mention the CGI computer effects which are notable only because they are some of the worst ever committed to celluloid, they really are that awful. The alien has no discernible shape or size & the best I can figure out looks like a blob with tentacles. There's not much gore here, there's a shot of a tentacle going into someone's stomach & exiting through their mouth & someone is shot through the head & that's it. There's an impromptu strip scene which comes of nowhere.

The IMDb reckons this had a budget of about $1,500,000, well I don't believe that for a second as I just cannot see where that money would have went & since the CGI effects are amongst the worst I have ever seen & there's plenty of footage stolen from other sources edited in here I just don't see The Thing Below having anything like that sort of money spent on it. Filmed in British Columbie in Canada the production value are poor, it's not scary & did anyone else notice how Rieser just stands in exactly the same spot on that boat for the first fort odd minutes? The acting sucks & the fact ex-Baywatch (1989-2001) bloke Billy Warlock is the star says everything.

The Thing Below or under whatever title you see it is simply terrible, it's OK for a laugh or two but is that really worth sitting though one of the worst written sci-fi monster films ever made? I'd say no. Simple really, don't bother.

A creature, found inside a meteor that was buried deep near the earth's core as an oil rig was digging for a new energy source, escapes from a canister housing it. It's tentacles spring forth to enter the victim's body erasing their identity and taking control. The thing can also telepathically read your thoughts if an individual gets too close causing hallucinations as a means of drawing victims near. It's up to Capt. Jack Griffin(soap opera vet Billy Warlock)and his minor ship crew to find out if anyone on the oil rig is still alive and can inform them on how to stop the alien force before it consumes everyone.

Clichéd flick is your basic rip-off of John Carpenter's THE THING and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. This perhaps could've been more fun if Jim Wynorski had found a good make-up effects designer instead of opting to go with the horrible, putrid computer effects instead(they are so cartoonish they elicit laughter instead of terror). As a creature feature this film flunks because it doesn't have an original bone in it's body or a creative leg to stand on. Warlock is fun as the hero, but the other characters are rather boring. Destined to find it's true home on the Sci-fi Channel where these kind of dreadful flicks, with terrible cheap effects, can live and breathe.

I picked it because of Billy warlock. Like him on Day of our Lives, so I thought it couldn't be too bad. Boy was I wrong!!! It was awful. Watched it cause the trailer on my cable PPV looked like it might be a good scare. NOT!! Could have done so much more, could have been so much better. There is absolutely no redeeming qualities for this movie. The whole plot was giving away in the first 10 minutes. The "Things" ability to change form should have been kept a secret longer. Don't waste your time. I wish I had come to this site and read the reviews prior to viewing...I would have saved myself some time (95 minutes) and money.

When I saw the previews for this movie, I thought it was going to be something very similar to Deep Rising. It actually turned out to be more similar to 1981's made for TV movie, "The Intruder Within" crossed with "Event Horizon". While the movie had the potential to be good and the storyline could have been embellished upon to give this movie a decent plot and more care could have been taken to give the movie more believability...it just wasn't done right.

First the creature in this movie is CGI...but not your ordinary high end CGI like that used in higher budget films, but rather the cartoonish like CGI that you see in video games. You can easily tell it is "fake" and it destroys the credibility of the film. This is true of certain scenes as well such as far away shots of the oil rig and other items.

Another thing I was set back by was that several scenes from this film were literally lifted right from the movie Virus.

***Plot Spoiler Ahead*** (skip below to **** if you do not want to read what follows) There is a large 3 dish antenna research vessel which is the same ship used in Virus. While the far away shot was not clear, you could make out that the ship had three words to it's name. The movie has the ship with a single word name. The ship gets blown up about 15mins or so into the movie...those scenes too were lifted from Virus. Next is the boat that was used buy the cast to get to the oil rig. It is none other than the very "Sea Star" from Virus as well. In the movie you can clearly see that much of the boat is laid out the same way as it was in Virus. Also the the boat also 'conveniently' happens to be towing a barge of supplies through a hurricane. The barge gets flooded and has to be cut free. Again many scenes were lifted from Virus.

Once the actors from the boat reach the oil rig, there is a scene where they walk from outside to inside. It looks very fake and artificial as the oil rig is made from the same cartoonish GGI as the monster is in the movie.

Once inside the rig, one by one the crew of the Sea Star notices that the rig appears to be abandoned. In their search for the truth at what went on...one by one the crew experiences the creature. The creature, which is basically a CGI Octopus at best, has telepathic powers and can make people hallucinate ala "Event Horizon". Naturally it separates and lures people away from the main group and it shows them what they want. Once close enough, it goes for the kill. The kill strike is laughable at times. But some of the cut scenes to the crews "inner thoughts" are laughable and in many cases shouldn't belong. Such as the first scene where the creature uses it's telepathy to lure one individual by showing him a very 'chesty' woman that strips for him. It just didn't belong.

The whole premise of the oil rig drillers originally finding the creature was pretty much lifted from "The Intruder Within". A highly radio active specimen is found, brought to the surface in a containment envelope. The container is damaged and the creature escapes to do it's thing. It is just something seen too often.

**** (Ok it is safe now).

While the movie did have a good premise and plot, I just felt it was executed so poorly it just had me asking why was the time wasted to make it in the first place.

If you are seriously into a monster chasing people in a confined space, check out "Deep Rising" instead. It is vastly superior. Next take a look at "The Intruder Within". While not a very good film in itself...it too ranks one up on this film.

If you would still like to see this film, do not make the mistake I did and rent it or get it on PPV, rather wait until it comes to Sci-Fi channel or regular TV.

The movie is somewhat viewer friendly as there are very few bloody or gory scenes. However, there are sexually explicit scenes and nudity, so it definitely not a family oriented film. But more then likely if the film reaches regular cable or broadcast TV, these offending parts will be hacked out.

I give the film a 2 because some of the acting was OK and the story, while clichéd, could have amounted to something really good if the film created really applied themselves (or had a bigger budget). But it is for that same reason,why the movie never really delivers and it's fake looking CGI which pretty much puts it on the bottom of the barrel for me. As I said before...this is one of those films that leaves you wondering why it was made in the first place.

Hi well how to start this review 1st of all this film is called Ghost Rig 2 here in the UK and has different box art work. Now for the Reviw which contains spoilers but not many. This film was bad and I mean real bad the CGI if you can call it that was the lowest of the low below play station 1 level. I think that they must have given the computer to there dog to do the work for them because there was no effort put in at all to make the effects look real. A lot of the film is made up of stock footage from other movies (virus take a bow) and a lot of stock footage of aircraft-carriers and ships but strangely they could not shoot any footage of an oil rig or find any stock footage so we have sum more very bad CGI ( you would think that a film called ghost rig would actuality have a real oil rig in it wouldn't you. Anyway the film is about sum nasty men in black types and scientists bringing up a old life form from the bottom of the sea (not seen) and guess what it gets free and kills every one. All your stock characters are here black man goes of on his own dead, Man shows every one a picture of his wife and kids back home dead, bad man in black type double crosses every one dead and so on. And less that is said about the cowboy and how he gets it the better. yes I know a cowboy in a monster on the loose on a oil rig movie. So what more can be said other than billy warlock should really get A new agent the CGI guys need to be fired the Director should stop wasting money making movies this bad. So please only watch this movie if you like very badly made films that have no good ideas of there own and steal from much better film PS don't watch this 1 star.

That was by far the worst movie I have ever seen. The movie was like watching one of the super old sci-fi movies. The "special" effects sucked....Come on we're in the 21st century; get a grip on technology and stop being a cheap @** ! Plus the ending??? I mean what the hell, why would she turn into the gov't guy. Why is he so important. Honestly, I've heard of irony, but she had no reason to turn into him.. and if she/he was the creature why didn't it kill the brothers! They had the disk (to which nothing was revealed of importance) and they blew the damn thing up. Writers today NEED TO CONSIDER COLLEGE!!!!! Then with all the military action to make sure it was destroyed you never actually seen anything being done by the marines..Totally counter acts the beginning of the film.

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.