Just prior to directing the beloved remake The Mummy, Stephen Sommers directed a 1998 creature feature titled Deep Rising. The film takes place on a cruise ship as a tentacled sea creature begins to attack the vessel. Now a cruise ship expert is destroying the cult horror movie with his own analysis.
Wendy Williams participated in a video with Insider to discuss the cruise ships used in a variety of movies. Her purpose is to break down each ship and determine how realistic the situations surrounding it are. As for the ship in the cult horror film Deep Rising, it looks like there are quite a few inaccuracies.
As she explains below, some of the key issues include the ship’s radio and how it also used sonar in the film. By the end of her assessment, she even rates the believability of the film’s “bridge scene” a zero.
Here’s the analysis that Williams shared:
“Radios, there are so many backups, and if the radios didn’t work, you have satellite phones, all sorts of different types of satellite communication. To be able to scramble a ship like that, no. There’s a lot of people on the bridge. I’m not sure what they’re all doing. Most cruise companies, not saying all of them, they have different terminology, but we would have what’s called green, yellow, and red conditions. Green would be when everything is smooth sailing. Typically, you would have a navigation officer up there, you would have an assistant or a co-navigator, and you would have one or two lookouts. That would be the bridge composition. Our bridges, like, a full red condition, would be captain, staff captain, chief mate or communicator, two lookouts. That’s it. Five. Five of you on the bridge, handling the situation. This particular cruise ship is equipped with sonar, which, I don’t know why you would even need that. You wouldn’t. So, everything is scrambled except for the sonar that’s picking up some, I guess it’s a sea monster in this one. Even though in this particular movie clip, they’re dealing with a sea monster, not to put whales or large mammals into a category of being sea monsters, very unfortunately, there are whale strikes. Cruise ships pay a lot of attention to give a large leave distance and to avoid whales at all costs. Believability from that bridge scene, probably zero.”
It’s certainly interesting to see how realistic, or not, a horror film can be. Or even a more dramatic film like James Cameron’s Titanic. Of course, it’s unlikely that this will steer any fans away from the film. After all, Deep Rising certainly isn’t a movie that was intended to be taken seriously. At least not to that extent.
Overall, though, Deep Rising continues to be a beloved example of just how versatile a horror movie can be. It chooses to have fun more than it does to scare viewers. At that rate, it’s easy to see how Sommers perfected the combination for his remake of Universal‘s The Mummy, which became a modern-day classic in its own right.
As always, stay tuned to ScreenGeek for any additional horror news as we have it.