An awful B movie at best with video quality similar to Dead Alive. I challenge anyone who is a "Aliens (James Cameron 1986)" Movie fan to count how many times either lines or almost entire sequences were ripped off from the first two Alien movies to make this classic piece of garbage.Cast members such as R. Lee Ermey and Ray Wise were the only two actors with any talent and the lead "Jack Scalia" was really absolutely horrible. I think they cast him for his massive cleft chin. I was also annoyed with the stereotyping of the only black male on the set John Toles-Bey who must look at this movie and just wonder. Look him up sometime as he has done a lot of interesting movies.But on this movie: The script as I said earlier was a rip-off of Aliens tweaked and turned into a submarine "thriller". It included such lines as "I got a bad feeling about this" and "Kill me" as one crew member is infected by one of the mutants and his belly starts doing the "alien hop" just before it pops out of his stomach. There is also a rip-off of the classic "get some!" via Bill Paxton. We also have a bunch of navy grunts running through caves with creepy crawlies popping out of walls. Even the explosions of the mutated creatures is very similar to the popping of aliens as they charge marines in the movie "Aliens". And the kicker is that some of the mutants spit acid (as opposed to having acid for blood). There are many more major examples. So if you want to see this script done well watch the first two classics Alien and Aliens (With Sigourney Weaver). You'll have a more enjoyable time.The plot could have been interesting and done better if not for confusing sequences in the start of the movie and generally poor editing. Camera shots were pretty dull and honestly it wasn't very hard to stop watching it and walk around the room to get a snack or check email. Many of the interactions between characters made little or no sense and went nowhere more often than not. The whole command structure between crew and Capt. was poorly done. I'm not even sure if there are Captains in the military that have full control over nuclear subs. In general this just shows that there was little research done for background information to make the movie seem at least a little respectable and there are many other similar examples (like dive depth etc..).If you like horrible movies or are a big fan of Alien and Aliens and want something to just laugh and shake your head at then this movie may be for you. As for me this one is going back on the shelf...permanently.

It's difficult to find anything worth of praise with this movie. It's not the worst picture ever made, but that's not saying a whole lot. The plot is quite incoherent and unbelievable; it seems that the producers wanted to make a space movie, but decided to make it underwater to cash in at the success of The Abyss. In some scenes it seems as if the story indeed was set to outer space initially; the sub has a landing gear, the technicians are worried of a rip in a rubber diving suit at the depths of several kilometers, where the pressure would crush the diver and the suit like an empty beer can. The movie starts out okay, with planning of a recovery of a lost naval sub. After that the movie takes a plunge along with the Siren 2.Effects are so-so. The navigational screens are all done on Commodore 64 (remember, this is 1990, not 1983), the sub is controlled like no other sub ever; instead of control consoles, the officers have keyboards with which they enter long number sequences to control various functions of the ship. The interior of the ship isn't too convincing either.The final scenes leap from awkward to absurd. Welcome to the fifties, you can check your suspension of disbelief at the door.I fail to see enjoyment factor here. The movie is neither good nor hilariously bad MST3k-style (until you get to the final scene), it's like eating a slightly bad apple.

The Rift is a "high-art" concept that combines the movie Aliens with Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and you get... well, you get a film that's worse than any old Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode, that's for sure.There are some truly creepy moments in thismfilm, but those are buried by many shoddy special effects, badly stereotyped characters like the frightened Hispanic cook and the overly cocky, leering and jiving Black guy; and lastly a really weak ending that's supposed to be like the one at the end of Alien but doesn't quite measure up to anything like Alien.And to add to this sorry mix, Ray Wise's character is supposed to be like the Ash character in Alien, but while his character is human in this film Wise's acting is no less robotic as he goes through the film with his little secret "sly" smiles to show that he's not who or what he's supposed to be.But despite all of it's flaws, it's not too bad of a sci-fi/horror film. It just could have used one, maybe two more script revisions to have polished it up.

I liked the film overall. OK, I admit the acting (except for Lee Ermey at the end) was uniformly bad. The idea of a land ledge deep down in the ocean was pretty neat. Sure there were stupid mistakes, but hey this is a movie. Look, late at night I prefer mindless monster movies. Another good thing was they didn't try to make Jack Scalia too much of a macho hero. And they didn't make too much romance. When you're facing unheard-of-before monsters who has time to say silly romantic lines we see in so many other movies? There was some smartness in the plot, although I would have liked some more genetics mumbo-jumbo. The starfish monster was pretty good. I'd give it 5/10.