Gods of the Deep came out to rent on Tuesday, Feb. 6. The film follows a deep-sea submarine team that wakes up an ancient race of otherwordly beings while on an expedition to a mysterious opening on the ocean floor.
As a low-budget, independent film — this is extremely well made. The performances are believable, it’s shot and edited well and the effects are solid for the most part.
At only 78 minutes long, the film dives into its central plotline fairly fast. It quickly highlights the risks that each of the characters are taking by going on this mission, which heightens the stakes later on. It also sets up mystery behind some of the characters, as the true intentions of everyone are unclear.
The ocean is such an intriguing landscape with a lot of untapped potential. The film utilizes this, creating suspense and tension out of the unknowns that lie below. Because this is all taking place in the deep sea, the environment is quite dark. The look of the creature benefits from this, as you can see the scale of its threat without being able to see some of the small imperfections as much. I liked the design of the creature — it’s a little silly, while also showing its powerful nature.
Gods of the Deep throws all reality out of the window after they enter the “submarine”. So many unrealistic things happen in this flick, so you really need to turn your brain off to enjoy it. The final act ups the ante on the craziness, and unfortunately, that’s where the movie fell apart for me.
The twist in the last act was… interesting. The film went in a different direction than I was hoping for, and the idea itself is something that we’ve seen before. I wish we could’ve seen more of the deep-sea creatures, rather than what actually happened in the last 25 minutes. I believe that you should be able to suspend disbelief and just enjoy a movie for what it is, but the last act becomes so absurd at times that it’s hard to engage with at all.
In the end, Gods of the Deep is plagued with an extremely unsatisfying final act. The film shows us a menacing, giant and unknown creature, but decides to put it aside for a generic twist that has been executed better in the past. I appreciated the setup and the initial journey, but the outlandishness of everything became too overbearing as the film came to a close.
Rating: 2 out of 5
