Psychotronic Cinemavision: Gods of the Deep

Jim Peters (Erek Nelson) is a professor of astrobiology at the Miskatonic University’s London Campus.  His father disappeared years before, while on an expedition for the Pickman Corporation who also fund his research.  When a new expedition is being put together after what appears to be a portal in a newly discovered trench deeper in the ocean than was believed possible, Jim is asked to join the crew.  Also on board is Christine Harris (Makenna Guyler), a biologist; Captain Atkins (Tim Cartwright) the expedition leader; Joe Meeker (Kane Surrey) as a security / safety officer; Hank O’Connell (Rory Wilton) the engineer and designer of the sub specially designed to withstand the great pressure that far down; and finally, Jed Pickman, the CEO of Pickman Corporation and funder of the expedition. After two months of training, which the audience never sees, not even in a training montage, The crew sets out to break records and to explore the world on the other side of the portal.  Little time is spent showing the ship diving to such depths and within screen minutes they reach the portal and go through.  They discover a giant body of some creature and while trying to get a tissue sample, they accidentally wake it up.  With the sample back on board and the ship attempting to get back to the surface after taking some heavy damage and losing a crew member, strange things start happening and the rest of the movie is a fight for survival.  Who lives? Who dies? And who is Cthulhu Chow?  Watch and find out!

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how good the film actually was.  The film is written and directed by Charlie Steeds who has given us a similar Lovecraftian horror film called Freeze along with a variety of other low budget horror flicks often utilizing the same actors (I think Tim Cartwright is in just about every one of his movies).  Gods of the Deep gave Steeds a slightly bigger budget than some of his other films, but this is still a relatively low budget horror film, which you can tell by some of the set pieces and creature creations.  It was nice to see most of the special effects were practical as opposed to CGI.  This does mean you have to stretch your suspension of disbelief a bit more than normal, but I appreciate the artistry in using models and costumes. Besides the low budget, the story doesn’t always make a lot of sense and relatively little time is taken on character development and exposition, you could say that Gods of the Deep lacks depth, but it’s really not that “type” of movie.  It does what it is intended to do, and that is provide a fun thriller loosely based on Lovecraft lore.

As for the actors, again, I was pleasantly surprised, as I was expecting schlocky over the top bad performances, and instead the cast seems pretty solid and a bit understated.  Derek Nelson makes a stunning male lead who has a warm and welcoming charisma that endears him to the audience, being matched by the beautiful Makenna Guyler’s performance as the good girl Christine Harris.  Kane Surry is a great foil to Derek’s good guy matching his good looks and playing the not so noble security chief who has ulterior motives… and guns!  Rory Wilton is reminiscent of John Rhys-Davies and does a great job as the engineer and designer of the submersible that most of the action takes place in.  I am not saying that any of their performances are going to garner them Academy Award nominations, but the entire cast does a great job with the material they were given and to their credit the actors are what made the film feel more polished than it probably would have otherwise.

Despite most of Lovecraft’s works (and films) being a part of what is called The Cthulhu Mythos, we usually never get to actually see Cthulhu so bonus points to this film for giving us the Great One himself!