While sci fi filmmakers, indulged by those multi-million dollar Hollywood handouts, more often than not drift ever further into extremes when it comes to fantastical realms, James Cameron has
been inspired to detour instead lately, back around into what might be termed the surreal documentary. The director of Aliens and The Terminator has turned to a new obsession with Ghosts Of The Abyss and now Aliens Of The Deep, in pursuit of the unimaginable as it exists unseen in the real world on ocean floors. And according to natural laws not governing other life forms, perhaps by extension even a clue to potential life in the absence of sunlight, on other
planets.
Testing the waters, so to speak, with the wizardry of futuristic style cinematic gadgetry combined with oceanography and 3D-IMAX, Cameron descends in Aliens Of The Deep to ocean bottom with some eager young NASA scientists and marine biologists, in a fanciful underwater flying machine reminiscent of the Wright Brothers vehicle of choice in an earlier time. And while we're meant to be dazzled by the novelty, not to mention shock and awe of the bizarre looking plant and animal life lurking in gorges miles below sea level, it's more often the ship propellers coming at you in 3D like they're going to slice off your nose, that's the really scary part.
It's also hard to get too worked up about these species that live off heat rather than light, no matter how oddly shaped and feathery fleshed these six foot blood worms and cast of thousands of lumiscent ocean bugs may be, and even if some of them are mix 'n match fish with feet. Even if these plants and animals did not exist, we may have already invented them. In an ironic way,
Cameron here, despite his best intentions, may simply be playing catchup to an alternate universe that has already upstaged the real one, courtesy of those sci fi special effects magicians working overtime for the past decades.
Tagging along after Cameron in Aliens Of The Deep, after all is said and done, is little more than that, no matter how visually unique and multi-dimensional the excursion. It is, finally, the director himself as part nerdy high school science teacher and part goofy wizard, who is the one, well, tripping, and any audience thrill never reaches beyond the mere vicarious. There's also the
somewhat awkward screen gaze celebrating with astonishment and wonder the awesome beauty of underwater earthquakes, which comes across as really unfortunate bad timing in the wake of the tsunami disaster. RATING: TWO AND A HALF.

Prairie Miller