DeepStar Six

The 11-strong crew of the DeepStar Six are wrapping up their six month research project on the ocean floor when a mysterious blip appears on their radar screens: an unidentified swimming object! What follows is a particularly messy game of sardines, the only rule being that no one attemps anything remotely unpredictable. The actors put up a good fight, but the cod techno-babble is so unremitting ('Stabilise stabilisers' - 'Stabilisers stabilised') that it is tempting to cheer when they are finally shut up. The only inventive aspects of the movie are the variously contrived fatalities, and a sea monster so ugly it makes Jaws look like a tadpole. Cunningham apes Ridley Scott and James Cameron competently enough, and there are scary moments, but he has not got the 'vision thing'. This simply rehashes the phony trappings of countless TV shows, to baldly go where we have been before.