I’ve never been diagnosed as
such, but I maintain that I’m actually quite claustrophobic. I mean, I can stand in something the size of
a closet or somesuch for an amount of time (the reasons for doing so don’t
matter here), but once the boundaries of a space actually touch my body, I tend
to panic. I’ve been at the bottom of dog
piles and felt the overwhelming urge to get out from underneath them (I think
that one is more from the feeling of being crushed than anything else). But there’s something about the idea of being
stuck in a confined area in which you can’t move that sends my mind into the
stratosphere. I don’t hyperventilate or
have an emotional breakdown in such situations (and let me be clear, it’s not a
situation I’ve been in often). I do,
however, slip into desperation mode, and will do damned near anything short of
chopping off a limb to extricate myself (of course, I’ve also never been given
the option of chopping off a limb, so I can’t honestly say whether I’d give it consideration). This is why I couldn’t work and/or live on a
submarine. I’ve toured a couple of decommissioned
ones, and seeing the amount of space in which people had to exist, the reality
of literally living on top of your shipmates, put the nail in the coffin of
that career path for me. Were I given
the chance to go on a sub like the Siren II from Juan Piquer Simón’s The Rift
(aka Endless Descent), my attitude might
change. Might. Slightly.
The Siren II is one of the most spacious submarines I’ve ever seen this
side of The Seaview from Irwin Allen’s
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. But, as far as I’m concerned, it’s still an
underwater casket (in more ways than one).
Submarine designer Wick Hayes (Jack Scalia) is carted off to Norway,
because his baby, the Siren I, experienced a problem, leaving it at the bottom
of an undersea rift. Joining the crew of
the Siren II, which includes Captain Phillips (R. Lee Ermey), biologist (and Wick’s ex-wife, coincidentally
enough) Lieutenant Nina Crawley (Deborah
Adair), and PC specialist Robbins (Ray
Wise), Wick heads down into the abyss (get it?) and encounters far more
than just a busted submarine.
I have to believe that the
filmmakers behind this opus are big fans of John Carpenter. How else do
you explain a shady federal agent named Plissken? There’s also Skeets (John Toles-Bey), the sassy black crew member who reminded me of
Nauls from The Thing. Speaking of that film, there’s also the idea
of a lifeform infecting and transforming its victims (though here simply to
kill them rather than duplicate them), and it all happens with a small crew of
professional people in a remote location from which there is no escape. Carpenter
isn’t the only source from which Simón
borrows. There is the reconciliation
subplot between Wick and Nina (shades of James
Cameron’s The Abyss). There is the undersea beastie aspect of films
like Deepstar Six and Leviathan. There is the giant jellyfish-thing enveloping
the submarine, and the crew electrifying the hull to turn it away that was used
in so very many episodes of Voyage to the
Bottom of the Sea (not to mention the multitude of other creatures the crew
encounter throughout the film). Also
from that series is the element of a secret saboteur in the service of some unscrupulous
government (in this case American rather than Soviet) aboard the craft (but if
you don’t realize that it’s Wise
from the minute you lay eyes on him and/or just see his name in the cast, then
you’ve likely never seen a film featuring Ray
Wise). It’s been said, and I believe
it to be true, that all filmmakers, artists, and so on borrow and/or lift
wholesale things from other filmmakers, artists, and so on. This is nothing new, but usually there is
some stamp from the borrower making such references their own. Simón’s
film wears its references right on its sleeve, and they largely play solely at
face value. There’s nothing to
distinguish these citations from the originals outside of the production values
and the actors involved. Still, they
come close to forming a whole, and like watching an amateur impressionist whip
out his Christopher Walken
imitation, they’re moderately entertaining as much for what they get wrong as
what they get right.
The rift of the title refers to a
few things in the film, outside of the obvious underwater crevasse. There is the rift between Wick and the
government for which he once designed.
Wick is anti-war, and, naturally, the government installed all manner of
nuclear weapons systems on his precious submarine. Plus, they’re duplicitous, lying bastards, as
they always are (“He bought it”). There
is the rift between Wick and Nina. She
only wants contact with Wick through their lawyers. He tells her to stop acting like “a spoiled
schoolgirl.” At no point does any of
this relationship develop or evolve until it’s necessary to give the audience a
happy ending. This shocked me a little,
because the situation is readymade for dramatic tension (just add water, so to
speak). Alas… There is the rift between the Siren II’s crew
and Wick. Most of them blame him for the
incident on the Siren I, though Wick blames the ill-advised (and bellicose,
more importantly) modifications made to his design. Phillips doesn’t like Wick overmuch, because
Wick is independent and non-regulation military. None of this goes anywhere either, until it’s
time for Wick to think outside the box and save everyone’s bacon with his
individualistic actions.
Notice how all of these revolve
around Wick. Every character, every plot
point, every scene exists solely to serve Wick, the independent everyman. Sure, he designs and builds state of the art
watercraft, but he has long hair, he lives in a modest home, and he’s a slob
(more or less). We’re supposed to
identify with him on some level. I
suppose you can up to a point, but that point is pretty far down on the
spectrum of audience identification.
Wick is more than an everyman hero (think Doug McClure in something like Humanoids
from the Deep as a point of reference).
He is a super-everyman. Despite
the scant aspects of his character that an audience recognizes in themselves,
there is far more that elevates him above mere mortals, and it’s not as if Scalia does modesty all that well,
regardless. As a result, I feel that The Rift works better on its exploitable
elements (in this instance, some gore/gross-out effects and monsters) than it
does on its human elements. So, if you
can make it through the clichés, the non-drama, and the banality enwrapping the
characters, you’ll at least be rewarded a tiny amount with some icky, goopy,
sanguinary moments.
MVT: The effects shine as
much as they can on a $1.3-million-dollar budget. I was also surprised at how graphic some of
them were.
Make or Break: With the
above being said, the Make is the first scene of the crew exploring the cavern
where the monsters dwell. It’s tough to
not like it, especially if monsters are your bag.
Score: 6/10
