My movie watch on 9 April 2023 was an early 1990s sci fi/monster movie entitled The Rift (aka Endless Descent).
Directed by J.P. Simón (or Juan Piquer Simón in full), and released in 1990 by Trimark Pictures, The Rift was produced by Francesca DeLaurentiis, daughter of eminent director Dino – who actually financed this movie but chose not to be publicly credited in that capacity. Although set underwater, it had originally been scripted with an Outer Space setting. Moreover, it began life as 250-page draft by Colin Wilson, author of numerous books on mysteries and the unexplained, before being rewritten by David Coleman, hired to do so by Francesca.
The Rift stars Jack Scalia and Ray Wise, with its plot focusing upon a NATO submarine rescue team who in their own vessel (named Siren II) are searching the ocean depths for a lost, earlier submarine (Siren I) and its scientists.
The team on Siren II include Wick Hayes (played by Scalia), the designer of Siren I, who is greatly disturbed to discover that various modifications appertaining to nuclear utilization had been made to its design without his prior knowledge – but that's not all.
To the profound shock of the entire Siren II team, they eventually discover that the scientists aboard Siren I had been involved in secret US governmental underwater biological warfare experiments that had gone wrong, badly wrong, creating all manner of mutated monster animals and even plants around a rift in the ocean floor, and inside a cave system close by where the experiments had taken place.
In order to cover up these highly dangerous mistakes, the government has covertly included one of its own spy agents, Robbins (Wise), in Siren II's team. Robbins's murderous mission is to ensure that once they have destroyed the mutants, Siren II's team are themselves also eliminated (except for himself), thereby eradicating all evidence of the mutants, and all observers of that evidence. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans...
The monsters are both varied and violent (and were created by Colin Arthur, who also worked on The Neverending Story). Featuring in some surprisingly gory scenes, they range from Alienesque entities with protrusible jaws and tongues (as in a gigantic starfish/sea anemone amalgam), or which impregnate human victims directly through their mouths (as in huge fly-like beasts with compound eyes), to tentacled aquatic horrors, a vast amorphous amoeboid entity that attempts to envelop the entire Siren II submarine, giant eggs containing seriously creepy semi-humanoid foetuses, and even rapidly-multiplying killer seaweed – I kid you not!
As for the humans: all of the cast provide serviceable performances (and like them we must ignore their wearing of normal diving suits at deepwater depths where the pressure would have destroyed them!), but The Rift steadfastly follows the all too familiar plot formula that is all too frequently employed in movies like this. Namely, eliminating Siren II's team members one by one, starting with those characters lowest in the cast list and steadily working its way upwards. No surprises there then. Equally, the audience becomes aware very early on in the proceedings that Robbins is not as trustworthy as he purports to be, thanks to some knowing stares and smirks by him into the camera – which is why revealing his treacherous plans here in this review cannot be considered a spoiler, because once again his eventual exposure in the film as a traitor comes as no surprise.
Such shortcomings notwithstanding, I enjoyed The Rift, most especially the scenes featuring its array of monsters, which naturally engaged my attention much more than its relatively mundane 'slaughter by numbers' treatment of the Siren II team.
Having said that, however, the actual act of viewing this movie was somewhat of a trial, resulting in my needing to watch it through twice in order to fully understand its plot. This was because the only two versions of The Rift readily available to me at that time, both of them on YouTube, had their dialogue in German and Spanish respectively, so I had to rely upon automatically-generated English subtitles. These were quite decent for the Spanish version, but atrocious for the German one (yet which, as bad luck would have it, was the version that I originally watched, and hence necessitated my rewatching the movie via the Spanish version in order to make sense of its plot).
Consequently, I vowed that if I ever saw an English-language video or DVD of this movie priced reasonably, I'd definitely add it to my collection (and watch it yet again – third time lucky!). And indeed, just a few days ago I did precisely that, purchasing an ex-rental big box video of it that I'd spotted for sale online – only to find when it arrived, however, that the tape was covered with mould! Needless to say, this necessitated its swift return, followed by a thankfully swift refund too, which I then used to purchase a second such video of it that had just been listed for sale. Happily, this one is in excellent condition, so I shall finally be able to watch The Rift in English! If when doing so I notice anything of significance that passed me by when watching the two foreign-language versions, I'll be sure to update this present review accordingly – so stay tuned!
Meanwhile, if you'd like to view a mélange of monsters appearing in The Rift, be sure to click here to view an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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