Customer Reviews

Thing Below [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Can I give less than one star? LOL Oh man, this may be the worst off-the-shelf (OTS) horror video ever made. From the lame costumes (they can't even get U.S. Navy uniforms right!), to the cookie-cutter dialog and characters, to the absolutely atrocious CGI (check out the digital octopus attack scene in the first 10 minutes - it is hysterical), this one is definately going in the "Worst Of" Hall of Shame, if I can just find a Hall of Shame what will accept it. It was so bad I was laughing up until the first 15 minutes were up, then I just couldn't take any more. Trust me, I try very hard to find GOOD OTS horror flicks (see my Listmania list for ones I'd recommend), and sometimes I just have to eat the rental cost and suffer through the bad ones... oh well, perhaps this review will save you the same pain (don't let the admittedly intriguing DVD cover art fool you).

Just by way of background, and while other reviewers seems to prefer to reveal much of the story and plot, I think that sort of ruins the film in many cases. So, you'll want to look for other reviews and reviewers if that is what you are looking for...

I like "creature" flicks - even the bad ones - so had high hopes this movie would be at least entertaining. It wasn't. Much of the movie makes no sense (the creature can read minds and yet apparently can't?) and the rest of it was just a jumble of weird bizarre images that didn't gel. Do yourself a favor - watch Lake Placid and pass on this one.

Amazon is offering this film along with "The Off Season" in a package deal. SKIP THEM BOTH!

This is really bad simply because it is not a really honest attempt to create a decent horror film. This is as bad as those awful "Brain Damage" films.

yuck.

This movie is really bad - so bad it descends into the "have fun while laughing at it" type - which is what we did.

The storyline has some promise. Secret government drilling, "something" picked up from deep underground, a gigantic storm that isolates everyone....but it is so full of holes you could drive a truck through it: the "thing" is supposedly so radioactive it will kill people in 10 seconds yet in all the encounters nobody ever has any radiation problems. The thing is from 24 miles down yet is unpressurized, etc. and nothing is done with the story other than to use it as an excuse for a series of random visions, including an extended scene of a stripper. There was no mention of why it bothered if it had all the powers demonstrated later in the movie.. but hey, with a movie like this why ask for a plot that makes sense.

I thought the actors did a servicable job, but then I am very forgiving and others may say it was horrible..it was pretty obvious that their ability to portray being eaten by the tentacles that would be poorly matted in later was not up to the task.

And lets talk about the special effects.. these were the absolute worst in any movie I have seen in the last 20 years. The tentacles look like Monty Python paper cutouts - literally! I've seen better special effects in lego-movies. It was unbelievable, we were simply stunned when they came on the screen. The drill rig was one scene, thats right, one picture that was re-referenced throughout the movie, plus a couple of generic hallways.

The deaths were handled off screen, except for a couple of bad "tentacle-through-the-mouth" effects and there really wasn't any blood and gore so I guess this would be classified more as a suspense than a horror except we were not in suspense, we were laughing at the special effects, dialog and plot holes.

I could go on, from the "General" in his business suit in a an empty room sitting at a card table with a laptop, to the tugboat captain that uses a shotgun to sever his towcable, to the obligatory unexplainable horror ending, this is one of those movies that is so bad its worth watching if your in the right mood. If you have run out of MST3K movies to laugh at and want to get a group of people around and have fun thats what this movie is good for.

Another one of those CGI generated movies that is ultimately silly and about as scary as a pile of pups. THE THING BELOW has little coherence in its confusing plot; the effects are pretty cheesy considering what we have to work with these days and the actors are mired in a script that has no sense of suspense or terror. Viewers are never really told what this creature really is or how it manages to infiltrate the thought processes and create hallucinatory images. Further proof that they just don't know how to make a good horror flick these days. Stick with John Carpenter's THE THING if you want a good scare for Halloween!

This is a Great movie....for a drinking game! Everytime someone laughs they have to drink up! And with this movie, there will be alot of drinking!!! Even The highest B.A.C. reached by playing this game will be higher than the feckless mahu Okole Puka's IQ who made this Lapuwale work of art! Other than that, its Awe-some......Drink up!

What a just aweful movie. The acting is absolutely aweful,the CGI is terrible and the whole premisae is disgusting. I can't begin to tell you how bad this movie is. The dialog between the characters is unbelievable bad. I though to myself within 5 minutes"I can't believe this movie was made". There is nothing redeeming about this movie. It shouldn't have been made for theater or DVD!

Thank you for the great condition it came. It played well and keep at the edge of my seat. This movie was sent on time and was true on the conditions it said it was. Nothing wrong about this movie.
Again, Thank you.

The Thing Below is about the a secret branch of the military transporting two radioactive rock samples, off course these samples soon turn out to be sea monsters and get loose. What follows is a crew or more or less cookie cutter monster chow...I mean characters that rummage around various locations trying to figure out what is going on and how to stop the monster, a bit of government conspiracy and allot of tentacles.

The biggest flaw about this movie is that the plot is badly written, it is jumbled and at times it is hard to understand what is really going on, there is the ship transporting the first sample and now we are at a oil rig, and then there is a second ship and what...who...where? Other than that I found the movie enjoyable, this is definitely not a masterpiece, however for one and a half hour of entertainment I think it works, the acting is okey and the locations, if confusing, are dark and spooky making them enjoyable.

The computer graphics monster in this movie is really, really bad. It is just a bunch of tentacles, which could be cool in an off itself, but the graphics are terribly done, other than that the creature is okey if rather generic. One thing I find odd about the creature however is that it uses so much energy to kill the human characters. The creature is telepathic so it catches it's prey by showing tempting images and luring people close, which is a cool enough ability, however when the creature is huge, have tentacles what can be get to about anywhere and it is quick moving, why do it need to use it's telepathy when the two legged food it intends to kill stands just a few meters away from it? Why not use a tentacle and just snatch him.

All in all this is a sub par, generic, sea monster movie, however the creature is interesting and all in all this movie is entertaining, I would recommend to pick it up cheaply as this is not worth full price, however if you can find it in a bargain bin then I think you would like it.

This is better than the bad horror films out there, but not by much. Billy Warlock was comical as he pretended to act like Charley Sheen acting like Brad Pitt. The special effects were cartoonish. The plot made sense as long as you didn't think too deeply about it. The scene to cut loose the barge was much too long. The strip tease in the middle of the movie didn't make much sense, but this was the least of my complaints. Whatever happened to the required three nude scenes per horror movie of the 1980's? I know this is a recession, but only one good nude scene? This would be a great film to try to point out what is stupid about it while smoking California pain killer.