BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

garbstanley The Abyss is one of Jim Cameron's lesser known efforts and one can see why. Its rather long, most of it is underwater(probably 90%) and the subject just might not be of interest to most people. The film itself is more known for its behind the scene shenanigans. The plot takes a bunch of civilian divers who go down to the trenches of the Ocean to recover a lost submarine. What they don't realize is that there are far more powerful forces at play here. The original version of the film was derided on release but a director's cut with additional footage sets most of the detractors straight. The last few minutes of this director's cut are rather good so watch this version of the film. Still, the film is just alright and nowhere on the level of say The Terminator or Titanic.

sukhib I only just saw this movie because it was directed by James Cameron. I was expecting maybe a little too much, the film was over long and boring. There is not that much too the movie, but it does have a fairly decent story line. Michael Biehn & Ed Harris are both solid in their roles. But the movie overall is a huge disappointment, if you are a James Cameron fan. I would not watch this ever again.

picturetaker I have to write a review. At this point there are more than 360 other reviews about this flick but I have to write a review.I am a fan of James Cameron. Though I admit I really dislike Avatar and don't get me started on there being 5 by the 2020s! But his other movies are great. Titanic, Terminator 1 & 2 and True Lies are all great! So after more than 27 years I finally saw this movie. I was 9 when it originally came out and I think I saw it on video. Maybe. Whatever. Likely fell asleep.So my review goes like this. IT WAS TOO LONG! Like it was like holding my breath under water long. You know when you're a kid in the pool with your school yard chum kind of contest holding your breath. Every second or two feels like an eternity. The story also felt very weak. Like I get they're on a rescue mission but they never really accomplished much except to get a nuke, one nuke out of many on the sub. Then a storm comes, there is always a storm. Then some space jellyfish come and interrupt the storey. Then more holding breath happens. So much so and then finally we see them and their ship. And their ship looked like a certain piece of the female anatomy!?! Like huh? And then the character Bud goes into the ship and watches low resolution television with some space jellyfish. And blah blah whatever! The Abyss was a mess. I will never watch this movie again unless I am recruited by the CIA and trained to interrogate "bad guys". I will have them watch this abysmal movie a few times and guaranteed my friend they will crack.

myrddinfyrch Why the low rating? Same reason it's on the Sundance Channel - because I watched the Director's Cut, rather than the original theater version. This may be called the Special Edition but I have no interest in figuring that out any longer.I had enjoyed the theater version on DVD since the concept seemed a relatively benign underwater alien encounter. It seemed disjointed, I had seen on TV the filming difficulties, and James Cameron is a preachy anti-Christian scumbag who was miserable to work with, but yeah OK it was watchable and has some decent scenes.Sundance Channel, of course, is Robert Redford's pet cable channel, and Redford is another notoriously noxious anti-American kinda guy (who earned much of his wealth playing military heroes &c.) So I thought I'd be interested in seeing what wound up on the cutting room floor. I was horribly mistaken, sitting through 4 hours worth of this atrocity (commercials included though, so I have no idea what the real length was; Special Edition is reportedly almost 3 hours).First, the movie lost nothing by such substantial cutting. The theater version was often turgid, but that was due to bad direction. The portions cut out of the backstory that are NOT directed at the main theme don't account for much; there's some more bits about the failed marriage of the two primary characters but nothing that builds any better empathy. About the only meaningful thing is that Ed Harris is presented slightly more "good ole boy" and Mastrantonio a bit more arrogant bitch.The bulk of the difference which was cut from theatrical release deserved to be. With Cameron's intent included, the movie turns into a preachy, clumsy anti-American screed that fails on pretty much every level. The American-Soviet antagonism which is not much more than a backdrop in the theatrical version is instead the main plot: the Cold War is about to explode into nuclear confrontation purely on the basis of the sunken US sub and an at-sea collision. The SEAL team are monsters, rather than just having a crazy leader. The aliens conjure a world-wide tsunami with their water magic, only to cause the wave to stop, with subsequent scenes of mindless human rejoicing.There's additional dialogue from Harris on behalf of the aliens which is more of the same "UFO angels won't destroy you... THIS TIME" Apparently the only reason the aliens didn't wipe out most of humanity was Harris' goodbye message to Mastrantonio? You can find it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD3vOduCwu0THOSE are the grounds for the not-well-explained saucer-city rising to the surface at the end of the film. It seemed pretty meaningless in the theatrical release, but now it's an obvious threat by a superior intelligence that humans are evil and better stop acting like children or we'd be wiped out be the angelic aliens.