Aliens Of The Deep (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Story	Very weak

Advantages:	Some new information
Disadvantages:	Not a film, definately a documentary, very long and slow

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

After seeing a trailer for this film on a recent Disney film both me and hubby watched he decided that it looked very interesting and fancied watching it, I personally was not keen but thought what the heck we will see if it is good. I have to say that I was not impressed at all with it and thought that it was not actually a film but an hour and a half documentary which they are calling a film.

The setting for the ‘film’ is out in the middle of the ocean aboard a massive ship. The crew are in fact marina biologists who arte investigating like in the depths of the ocean and are trying to discover new ‘alien’ life forms down there. The crew have decided for some reason to let NASA join them on this mission so they can work together and investigate these life forms and discover if there are some similarities between the life forms here and those on other planets.

The crew spend lots of time preparing for the first dive and showing us the equipment which they are using, 2 submarines which hold a small crew and a robotic machine which is able to collect samples with a robotic arm. They show us how they have to be checked so many times as the slightest imperfection could cause disastrous effects on the crew. At one point the mission is postponed as there is a problem with one of the machines but once this is resolved then the dive begins.

As NASA are joining the dive we are introduced to more people and told what their jobs are and how they believe that this dive will help with finding life signs on other planets. Some of the crew are normal people but some of them are a little crazy and go over the top with their explanations which I did not enjoy. As the dive begins they start to collect samples of rocks and crabs which are taken back to the surface to be investigated and as they get deeper into the ocean they start to see different creatures which they have never before seen but will they actually find any new species or alien life forms?

As I said before this was not so much a film but a very long documentary which I personally found very off putting as if I would have known this then I would have chosen not to have watched it. The crew were all relatively nice people but I did find some of them to be very strange and over animated when they were describing things which they were hoping to find and how they think that this will give some indication of life on Mars. There was a narrator which did speak throughout the film and helped to introduce new crew members and give us a bit of information on the equipment which was being used. The main leader of the crew was a very nice man but unfortunately I cannot remember his name and to me he seemed the only genuine person on the ship.

I did actually find seeing the equipment which was used interesting and I did learn something new as they told us a little of how they worked. The equipment itself was not new as I had in fact seen it in other documentaries but never knew how it worked before. As the dive progressed I found that the creatures which they were seeing were not at all new to me, the crew had never seen them before but I have watched a wonderful series with David Attenborough where he did go to the depths of the ocean and discover the sea creatures and I soon realized that this documentary was made before this series so perhaps if I would have seen this before then yes they all would have been new.

The creatures which I have mentioned before were actually different types of jellyfish and bacteria which to me were not exciting but the crew seemed to find great joy in looking at rocks where as I found it so boring.

In the film there are a lot of computer generated features which show how rockets were going to be going to Mars and how they intend to try and find the ice which they believe is there under a shallow layer of rock and how they will be drilling though it. They did go a little far with this as none of it looked very real and I cannot believe what they though they would find, it just made the film have an element of silliness and for scientists and NASA to come up with a explanation of this was a bit of a let down for me.

The music in the film for me was probably the best bit as it was very relaxing and soothing, I do give a lot of credit to Jeehun Hwang who created all of this as he did a fantastic job.

The running time of this ‘film’ is 95 minutes which I felt to be very long as the film just seemed to be showing us the same things over again and there was no real scientific outcome from it. The certificate on it is a Universal which means it is suitable for all and I do agree with this although I cannot really see children being interested enough to sit through the whole thing.

Considering this ‘film’ was Directed by James Cameron who won an award for Best Director of Titanic I was very disappointed by this and certainly feel that the trailer was inaccurate in the way it put this ‘film’ across as personally I would have classed this as a documentary.

I am not going to recommend this as it is very dated now due to being made a few years ago and we have certainly moved on and found bigger and better life forms in out oceans since. If you do actually fancy seeing this film then it is available for around the £6 mark at Amazon.

I would actually recommend watching a bit of David Attenborough instead!