The Rift

Showing it's age now, used to love this movies years ago!

Great cast in this cheap under water knockoff. The creatures may not be as great as in something like Leviathan, but it's still fairly effective. Even when it's a little cliche.

❌ Script The story isn't bad, it has all the elements to be enticing and interesting, however the script is horrible. The characters are caricatures of human beings. The actions and reactions makes absolutely no sense and it's simply cringeworthy. The dialogue is written by someone who doesn't speak English and who has never witnessed human interactions at all.

In the hands of a competent scriptwriter this could have been a good story; but sadly this wasn't the case.

✅ Monster effects The effects are cheap, but they work fairly well. They use a variety of monsters, and while it might have been better to just focus on on plant-monsters the monster effects works

❌ Other effects These effects were horrible. There are techniques for making miniatures look realistic, those techniques were not used here. The sub appears to be extremely small every time we see it, but inside there are big square rooms. If you are going for a story about a sub, at least make the sub look good.

If you leave your sub at 30 000 feet you should wear proper diving gear; not just a normal scuba suit. Take a look at any of the 1000 other deep sea movies and you see how it should be done. It can be done fairly cheap... or as an alternative... don't have a deep diving scene if you can't pull the effects off.

❌ Acting The acting was horrible. The lines were read as if sitting around a table. We have the entire spectrum from extreme overacting to no acting at all. Even if the budget is small you can have decent acting. Some of the bad acting surely comes from the bad script, but it's clearly directed by someone who shouldn't be allowed to make movies.

Verdict I had to struggle to finish this movie. While the monster effects are decent the movie fails to convince. I can accept bad effects; I can even accept horrible effects if the movie is made with heart. This movie isn't made with heart. What really kills the movie is the acting and the human interactions. Avoid this movie, folks!

Also titled as 'Endless Descent' for home video release.