Apocalyptic films often fit in the thriller category just fine. The Abyss seemed like it would deliver with its type of story involving geological problems in a small town. Predictably, however lacking novelty, the supposed love dilemma we see between the main characters, along with the dysfunctional family setting, steered the film into a rather indecisive ending.
How the story and dialogue between the characters could have been saved is a difficult question to answer. And so, as time kept on passing by rather slowly owing to the films perplexed pacing, my hopes were dashed away when it dawned on me that I had wasted time.
No actor was familiar, and neither was the writer, but scrolling endlessly for something to distract myself for a while with, The Abyss was the lucky one—unfortunately so.
As the Swedish town of Kiruna sinks, Frigga finds herself torn between her family and her job as security at the world's largest underground mine. Source
Everything's normal at first in this type of film, until something odd and unusual happens, and then it all changes. At that point, you can expect the film to take interesting turns and could thrust into truly thrilling experiences, or it just flops and becomes somewhat nonsensical. And so I deemed the film to be starting fairly well in the beginning.
You see, efficient dialogue is important in thriller films, but the visual storytelling should also play its part well in telling the story. What I found in The Abyss was that the dialogue between the characters was a tad bit too much, and the visual storytelling wasn't even anything to appreciate.
There was so much talking that it felt tiring to keep up, and there was no good reason why that had to be, as they weren't exactly contributing to the storyline or its depth. In films like A Quiet Place, Birdbox, and Don't Breathe, you'd barely hear much dialogue between characters, and those films did quite alright.
The concept of a town crumbling due to some geological problems in that area really is alright for a concept that something commendable can be built on. What I saw in most parts of the film, however, were frequent banter between characters and pointless diversions. I didn't quite understand where the film was going.
It may have been just me, but the male characters in this film were generally portrayed as weak. I just didn't get it. And, also, the film focuses way too much on the dysfunctional family. The film just centred on that family, and their meaning of dysfunction wasn't anything deep or worth that much attention.
For a film with a cast of main characters so small—just four—you would expect to see most of them frequently or all at once on the scene. In such a case, which is really common with thriller films, performance goes a long way. Dialogue being poor, the acting didn't even help salvage. And the same goes for the extras in the film as well.
And talking about the film's cinematography, I would have said the film was from 2010 because of how outdated it looked. The earthquakes caused by the tremors in the mountain due to the mining in that area were unimpressive.
When the film ended, I was perplexed and appalled by what I had just spent one hour and four minutes watching. And I didn't even watch it all at once, as I kept stopping to continue later. The characters were very underdeveloped, the story was all over the place, and the CGI was terrible.
A 3/10 rating is what I'll give this film. Sadly, I had been enjoying Swedish films a lot lately, only to find this one and ruin the streak.
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