35 years ago, Hollywood’s biggest director made his most underrated blockbuster
Very few filmmakers have found as much consistent blockbuster success in Hollywood as James Cameron. The writer-director has been a marquee name for the past 40 years, and he’s directed some of the biggest and most beloved genre films of all time. He’s become so highly regarded that he can return from a 13-year break with a sequel that most casual moviegoers had forgotten was even in development and still be enough of a draw to make sure it rakes in some of the most impressive box office numbers in Hollywood history. On top of all of his commercial successes, the general critical appreciation for Cameron has only continued to grow at a steady rate in recent years.
Despite his popularity, though, even Cameron has at least one underrated title in his filmography. In his case, that honor belongs to 1989’s The Abyss. Released in between 1986’s Aliens and 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Abyss is an underwater sci-fi thriller that has consistently flown under the radar for the past 35 years. While it has its fair share of fans, the movie has never received as much attention as all of Cameron’s other efforts (barring, say, 1982’s Piranha II: The Spawning). That isn’t, however, a reflection of The Abyss‘ quality. On the contrary, it ranks high as one of the most technically astonishing and movingly earnest films that Cameron has ever made.
Close encounters under the sea
Set in the early 1990s, The Abyss revolves around the sinking of a U.S. submarine after it has a run-in with an underwater object of unclear origin. Intent on investigating the cause of the accident before Soviet ships are able to collect the sunken sub’s remains, the U.S. deploys a special team to an underwater drilling platform located near the Cayman Trough where the initial collision occurred. In taking part in the mission, the underwater platform’s designer, Dr. Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) has to reunite with its overseer, Bud (Ed Harris), who also happens to be her estranged husband. When she and her fellow team members arrive, the tension between her and Bud isn’t the only thing that Lindsey is forced to contend with.
She and everyone else on the platform also find themselves witness to sightings of nearby luminescent, seemingly alien beings. This discovery, which Cameron stretches across a handful of perfectly paced and shot sequences, send Lindsey, Bud, and the rest of The Abyss‘ human crew into varying degrees of confusion and fear. In typical Cameron fashion, while some of the film’s characters react to the presence of their alien neighbors with healthy curiosity, others view it as a potential threat to their safety. Cameron, who has always been as much of a gifted craftsman as he is an expert entertainer, makes the human conflicts of The Abyss as compelling and tense as the film’s larger themes and overarching story.
Character development is just as important as the action set pieces
A second-act sub versus sub battle is particularly well-constructed, not only because of how believably Cameron renders The Abyss‘ underwater stunts (a majority of which were infamously performed practically) but also because of how easy he makes tracking the geography of the conflict and its increasingly life-and-death stakes. Its climax, an ingeniously paced and staged implosion that kills The Abyss‘ primary antagonist, only makes the entire sequence stand out even more.
Cameron, meanwhile, mines beautiful performances out of both Mastrantonio and Harris. If the viewer doesn’t believe in the depth of their characters’ relationship, then The Abyss fails, but Mastrantonio and Harris make sure that it doesn’t. The two don’t let the physical demands of the film’s production get in the way of their work — turning in performances that are heroic and heartsick in equal measure.
A sci-fi movie that’s more about marriage than aliens
The gradual mending of Lindsey and Bud’s relationship is the thematic and emotional backbone of The Abyss. It’s the element of the film that elevates it to greater heights and allows its biggest sci-fi swings and twists to still resonate on a human level. Through their marriage, Cameron explores the complexities of forgiveness and love and earnestly argues that nothing and no one is ever too late to save. That argument is subsequently reinforced when Bud willingly embarks on a dangerous, potentially fatal mission to disarm a missile that was sent to attack the film’s unsuspecting, undeserving alien beings. Bud’s efforts pave the way for The Abyss‘ hopeful, life-affirming ending, in which Cameron makes a not particularly original but no less deeply felt case for why man’s greatest strength lies in our capacity for empathy, compassion, and growth.
The film’s themes take on a larger, social meaning in The Abyss‘ extended special edition, which recenters all of the film’s events against a backdrop of increasing tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. Even in this version, though, it’s Lindsey and Bud’s marriage that ultimately binds all of The Abyss‘ ideas — both cultural and personal — together. In this similarity, one of Cameron’s greatest strengths as a filmmaker is made clear. He’s a director who has spent most of his career working with canvases larger than many of his contemporaries have ever been given the chance to touch, but no matter how big his budgets and fictional worlds may get, he never loses sight of the human stories at the center of them.
That’s a mistake Cameron has avoided throughout his career, and he certainly does so in The Abyss. The film may not be nearly as well-known as Titanic or Avatar: The Way of Water, but if its growing legacy is proof of anything, it’s that it deserves to be remembered right alongside them as one of Cameron’s greatest achievements.
The Abyss is streaming now on Hulu.
