All things wet and wonderful... Seems Hollywood is stuck on anything to do with water (since that movie - Titanic), as well as strange beasties from beneath our feet.

In Phantoms, the beastie came from beneath the earth, and ate the people, excreting their jewelry and assorted metal bits. In Deep Rising, the beastie comes from beneath the sea, eats the people, and excretes the bits it doesn't like, like their skeletons.

In both movies, people walk around in dark watery tunnels, all alone, and with little care for their safety, even though we, the all-knowing audience who have the benefit of hearing the soundtrack play sinister music, just know some terrible tradegy is about to occur.

So you see how totally different these two movie are?

Good. Now let's look at Titanic. There, we have scenes of absolute pandemonium when the large, luxury cruise liner hits something large. We have people desperately running through water-filled tunnels and passages, the water level rising as the ship sinks.

Guess what? We have exactly the same scenes in Deep Rising.

At least this film makes sure that all the beautiful people survive, instead of only half of them.

In all fairness, I am still trying to work out what genre the film falls in. It is supposed to be a horror, and it follows the pattern for such films. However, some of the scenes were so preposterous that I was not sure whether they were trying to be over the top and making a black comedy like The Crow (I).

For example, there is the jetski chase scene near the end, where the beautiful people are fleeing the monster on a jetski, along the passageways of the ship. At full speed. The ship's doors work like those in Star Trek, sliding open horizontally. No problem for the hero, while approaching such closed doors at full speed on his jetski, to use his weapon to nonchalantly shoot long steel shafts at - and hit - the tiny "open" button next to the door. Several times.

Or take the super-duper "Chinese" guns which the baddies use. Each hold 1000 rounds. This was necessary to allow said baddies to shoot zillions of bullets at the monster without running out of bullets.

Problem is, I guess the scriptwriter has no idea just how heavy 1000 large calibre bullets are. It's not something you are going to carry around like a plastic toy gun.

Buts let's ignore the large holes in the plot - and the ship, which somehow doesn't sink, even though the "mother monster" (see: video games - mother ship) comes straight up through the bottom of the ship, and look at the film as a whole.

The special effects are pretty good. The monster is very vicious and ravenous, having an insatiable appetite for human flesh. The effects extend to various bits of the ship - all heavy duty metal - buckling and suffering under the assault from the monster.

The baddies are all suitably bad, even the good baddie. The bad goodie is suitably beautiful, and somehow manages to change out of a totally impractical red evening gown into a jeans and t-shirt in full view of all the men, and none of them even notice. She found these clothes lying around in the kitchen. There also happened to be a bra which was exactly the right size. Amazing things, movies.

Naturally all the baddies - and most of the goodies - end up as lunch.

The film is particularly gory, with the emphasis on partially eaten human, so have supper before the show.

If you liked Phantoms, Alien, horror movies in general, or fall into the category "teenage boy", you will probably enjoy this.