Movie Review – The Abyss

The Abyss (1989)
Written and directed by James Cameron

I think James Cameron is neurodivergent, and his prominent special interest is the ocean. This is apparent when you examine his work’s direction from The Abyss to the present. Water and the life that teems within it are fascinating to the man. We can see that coming to the forefront with this film as he spends more time showing off some early digital effects, but more so the gorgeous underwater photography. When you realize this was 1989, it really does sound like a film you would expect to see in the mid-1990s or later. In that way, Cameron is ahead of the curve. It’s a shame the story and the characters are given short shrift here.

A U.S. nuclear submarine sinks near the Cayman Trough after encountering an unidentified object. Soviet ships have moved with plans to salvage, and a SEAL team is sent to try and get to the vessel first. Helping the SEALs is the underwater drilling team of Deep Core using experimental tech, which is working on the Trough. The company is run by an estranged husband and wife duo of Dr. Lindsey Brigham (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and Virgil “Bud” (Ed Harris). The SEALs are led by Lt. Coffey (Michael Biehn), who has kept many aspects of his operation secret and wants to be taught how to operate the equipment independently. A storm is also moving in, cranking up the pressure on the recovery. There are also sightings of strange lights related to the object that brought the sub down. Is this just an underwater remake of Close Encounters of the Third Kind that also predicts Michael Bay’s Armageddon? Sorta, kinda.

The two most substantial things in The Abyss are the technical achievements that won the film an Oscar and Michael Biehn’s slow-burn performance as Coffey. Cameron has a thing for creating villains that pay off. It’s surprising because they are often very broadly drawn. Take the T1000 for instance. There’s little character there, but there’s still the grain of something. Cameron’s villains are very primal figures with motivations that are clearly understood. In some ways, they are the distilled essence of villains in media, which is why they work. The filmmaker never tries to overcomplicate them or get the audience on their side.

The film also wants to have a love story, but that takes place between two actors with very little chemistry, likely because that exact broad nature is applied to romance, which needs more detail and nuance. I never really bought Lindsey and Virgil as a couple and think you could have just made them co-owners of Deep Core, coming at the operation from two perspectives – business versus the actual labor. The moments where we’re supposed to be on the edge of our seats as one of them is in peril and the other desperately tries to do everything they can to save them just fall flat when you look at this as a love story. 

The Abyss is a relatively plotless film made to show the technical wonders Cameron’s team developed. Shoehorning in a love story, or the seeming afterthought of an extraterrestrial story feels so low-effort you wish they hadn’t even tried. The aliens really feel pointless, barely showing up and then suddenly acting as a deus ex machina in the third act. I suspect we had a movie about an underwater rescue operation with the Coffey sub-plot. Then, an executive or higher-up suggested adding aliens, so it might compare to something like Close Encounters or be a hook for people who saw Cameron as a science fiction director only. We learn nothing about these aliens other than they live in the water and can control it.

There’s a reasonably expansive supporting cast, but you will learn nothing about them, either. In this way, the film feels like the forerunner to later blockbuster disaster movies from Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich. Everyone is painted with as broad a brush as possible. There’s a drop of progressive casting – the Black woman pilot, for instance – but would I call these people “characters” in that they have agency or really do anything of import that affects the plot? Nah. I would have liked to get that, but it doesn’t happen because Cameron needs more shots of the submarine craft. 

You get the strong sense that Cameron was trying to make a Spielberg movie, which is very perplexing at this point in his career. The Terminator and Aliens cemented him as someone talented at directing darker science fiction fare, not maudlin wonderment. Thankfully, the director realized this, and his following films returned to Cameron’s strengths as a filmmaker. Because the director is so out of his element here, each act of the movie can sometimes feel like we’ve stepped into a whole other story. Where it excels is in large-scale technical set-pieces. The crane collapse sequence is a perfect example of this, where I got caught up in the immediate situation while still not caring about the characters involved. The sense of peril was so strong.

The Abyss is not worth watching unless you are a Cameron completist. It’s so painfully generic and shockingly dull that I’m annoyed I rewatched myself. Michael Biehn would only work with Cameron once more, and that would be for a scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day that ultimately was cut from the theatrical release. That’s a shame because they are a director-actor pair that works together well. You can tell Biehn understands what Cameron wants and can deliver. Overall, it’s best to let The Abyss sink to the bottom of the ocean and stay there.