The tyranist's thoughts
Rish and I first caught this one in the theatre back in '98 at the top of a horrible water-logged double feature with Hard Rain on the bottom half. Unfortunately, the double-feature was self-inflicted since we just picked two movies we were interested in and went to both back to back. Fortunately, it was in the glory days when there was still a dollar-theatre four blocks from my apartment and the whole thing cost us a whopping two bucks each. The other neat thing about that theatre (and likely the reason it no longer exists) is that there might have been two other people in the theatre with us while we were watching those movies so we could complain as loudly as we liked.
Anyway, a crack team of scientists is hastily assembled when a cable-laying boat (insert your own joke here) stumbles across a spaceship. Naturally they have all kinds of problems (mental and physical) and ultimately, bad things happen.
When I told Rish that I was going to review this one he asked me if it was indeed Horror. The short answer is yes. The long answer is that in spite of the fact that it really isn't terribly scary (especially on the small screen) there are too many horror elements and sequences to ignore. Additionally, I've noticed that Mr. Crichton's movies are invariably labelled with the T-word and I like to dispel that myth as often as I can.
To be completely honest with you, there are long stretches of this movie that I really dig on. The effects are nice, the premise is top-notch and some of the suspense/scares are well done. What ruins the movie for me is the same thing that ruined the book for me, the ending. I hate it. To me this is the ultimate cop-out ending. I'm not going to spoil it for you since I know a number of people who really like it, but know that my reason for disliking the movie almost wholly lies at the end.
For sci-fi fans and Crichton fans in specific, this one is pretty good and you should probably at least check it out.