The Abyss (1989)

Director: James Cameron

Starring: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Michael Biehn

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: A place on earth more awesome than anywhere in space.

Plot: When the crew of an underwater oil rig are enlisted to assist in the rescue of an American nuclear submarine at the height of the Cold War, they discover a strange and mysterious force living in the deep and their rescue mission becomes an adventure into the wondrous and the unknown.

My Rating: 8/10 (with shit ending) & 9.5/10 (w/o shit ending)

Would I watch it again? Yes and I'll probably stop it short.

I have always considered this to be Cameron's best film along with THE TERMINATOR (1984). It's beautifully shot, the characters are fleshed out nicely along with some fantastic performances (a rarity in a Cameron picture), great score by Alan Silvestri and outstanding special effects that still hold up twenty years later.


It's a great sci-fi thriller. Cameron really knows how to ratchet up some tension, too. The resuscitation scene, despite knowing damn well how it ends, tears me up every time I watch it. Ed Harris is usually pretty intense but he's off the charts in that scene and it's his performance that makes it work as well as it does. I shudder to think what the current go-to, flavor of the month, blandest action star ever, Sam Worthington would have done. Uhhhhhhhhh.


The special edition director's cut is the one to watch...except for one thing; the ending. Now it's been a lot of years since I saw it and I had forgotten how much I loathed the ending. The aliens have Bud (Harris) and they show him a rapid succession of TV clips of violence throughout the ages. Bud verbally figures out that they want humans to stop fighting or it's curtains for the lot of us. It's so heavy-handed that your head hurts from the message that's attached to the shovel that's just been slammed upside your face. WE FUCKING GET IT, CAMERON! STOP! Does it stop? No. From this point to the end credits it's bad acting, dialogue and cornball shit you'd expect from a Michael Bay movie. The spectrum from what came before couldn't be wider.


Wait...maybe, just maybe the aliens really dig shit blowing up and war movies and Bud completely misread it and put words into their mouths. Hmmmm. Naw. Cameron had to shove his message down our throats...just like he did with AVATAR (2009). There are those who believe Cameron to be a truly great film maker. I disagree. He's certainly capable of being one but with THE ABYSS, he had something really special and he blew it in the eleventh hour. Don't get me wrong; I'm not opposed to messages in film...it's just that...well, sometimes it is the messenger and not the message after all.