Gods of the Deep

Sometimes I look forward to watching a movie and sometimes I toss a dart and hope I hit something good. This week's dart hit:

Gods of the Deep (2023).

To be fair, I don't actually know if 2023 is correct. IMDB says it is, but Letterboxd says 2024.

This is a Lovecraftian movie, as in based on the Cthulhu Mythos started by H. P. Lovecraft. In fact it wears it on the sleeve, and dove head first in the Mythos pool. I wish they would have resisted the temptation to call the company Pickman, but this is something a lot of Mythos movies do. I don't know if it is a loving homage or a way to try to look clever, but movies like Gods of the Deep are not subtle in anything they do.

A deep sea probe finds a strange hole at the bottom of the ocean between Antarctica and South America. This area is deeper than the Challenger Deep and the hole is clearly not natural. The owners of the probe, the Pickman Corporation, as in Lovecraft's story Pickman's Model (1927). They contact Doctor Jim Peters (Derek Nelson), an eminent astrobiologist at Miskatonic University to help go down there. The Pickman Corp. has developed a new high tech sub that can handle the incredible pressures. A small team goes down there and things get... squiggly.

Gods of the Deep is a British horror/sci-fi movie with a low budget. I couldn't find how low, but the cutting edge submarine is visibly built from corrugated roofing, PVC piping, thin acrylic and all the hazard tape you could ever want. That's not to say all the effects are bad, they aren't. In fact some are actually good, just as some are pretty bad. To their credit, they stayed within what they could portray in one fashion or another. Not all low budget movies do that.

What keeps Gods of the Deep from being a failure are the actors. They all do a hell of a job selling the entire thing. You believe that they see what they are seeing no matter how it looks. What is funny is that I could swear I have seen four members of the main cast in other movies, but according to IMDB, I haven't seen them in anything. Spooky...

So, do I recommend this movie? To Mythos fans I do. Everyone else should probably find something else to watch. These fans should also have a certain love for cheese or they won't have a good time. Gods of the Deep should be a failure, but for the actors and the fact that they did the best they could. They tried hard and somehow pulled off a win. Gods of the Deep is not a good movie, but it isn't a bad one either. I had a good time, but I doubt I'll watch it more than the once.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!