Godzilla used state-of-the-art CGI to decommission the man in a suit. Deep Rising seeks to consign the rubber octopus to the special effects museum (with a sign beneath it no doubt, saying, "Last used in Warlords Of Atlantis, 1978"). However, unlike Godzilla, this monster B-movie doesn't have ideas above its station.
The set-up mixes Beyond The Poseidon Adventure with Under Seige: a motley squad of piratical armed mercenaries in the South China Sea - transported, no-questions-asked, by a wisecracking sea dog (Williams) and his whining "grease monkey" (O'Connor) - boards luxury liner Argonautica in order to fleece its rich passengers. However, what they find is a ghost ship and just three survivors: a jewel thief in a red dress (Janssen), the vessel's captain (Derrick O'Connor) and shifty owner (Anthony Heald). Williams utters that threadbare cue: "I've got a really bad feeling about this", and the claustrophobic Alien-blueprint battle begins - dark corridors, big guns, half-glimpsed tentacles, individuals picked off one by one.
Like the previous year's Anaconda and The Relic, Deep Rising gives it the full Blue Peter, making a lot out of very little. It's nothing we haven't seen before, and as a scriptwriter, director Sommers is no David Mamet ("There's something down here," warns Williams, before our first octopoid sighting; "An island!" exclaims Heald when he spies land), but there is an unmistakable air of knowing self-parody about the square-jawed heroics and the Ten Little Indians framework, and it is possible to laugh with the film and not at it. Tragically, the worst lines are hogged by the Brits, a miscast Jason Flemyng machine-gunning tentacles with an unconvincing, "Have some of this, you wankers!"
The creature effects, by Total Recall/ The Thing supremo Rob Bottin, are not bad, and, while only the lily-livered will actually find the it's-behind-you tactics scary, it rattles along at a fair lick.