The Superdeep Review — Deeply Bore-ing
Russian monster flick so poorly produced and badly shot, we wondered why it was released at all
Every once in awhile we get to review hidden indie gems that truly amaze us and make us wonder how in the world did mainstream audiences not flock to see it. The Superdeep is NOT one of those films. In fact, we would go as far as to slap an advisory on it, warning people not to waste their time on this monstrously epic trash. Not only was the storyline ridiculous, most of the character’s motivations and actions made zero sense, and for practically 40% of the time, the shots were so badly lit that I had to turn back to check if the projector was malfunctioning. Additionally, the framing of many shots was shoddy, and the soundtrack was at times ludicrous. For example, in a tense lift scene where the main characters were fleeing from the monster, the director decided to match that scene with a slow piece of music that completely neutered the excitement and disrupted what could have been a half-decent setpiece.
Based on the documented rumours about certain unexplained sounds that were heard prior to an explosion during the drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russian during the 1980s, the premise of this movie was intriguing — What lifeforms made those sounds? What caused the explosion? Why was the borehole eventually closed off permanently? The official explanation is that due to temperatures being too hot ( a reported 180 degrees celsius ) drilling had to be called off. This movie attempted to provide a more insidious explanation — an alien lifeform, awakened by the drilling, caused the explosion and wreaked havoc within the Superdeep facility by infecting everyone there with some sort of fast-growing parasitic mold that controls their minds and commands them to head towards the alien lifeform to be absorbed, thus the hole had to be shut down to prevent the alien from reaching the surface. Sounds interesting right? Yes it does sound familiar and many other films have explored how scientific research ends up awakening some ancient lifeform that ends up killing everyone, but in the hands of Ridley Scott, this would have been enough to produce a blockbuster smash hit. For most other directors, probably a decent enough body horror B movie at least. Think The Meg, Underwater, and even the classic The Thing. Therefore, how the director Arseny Syuhin managed to screw this up so badly is truly inexplicable.
About the only good thing I salvaged from my experience was the body horror make up which I think was where most of the budget went into. It couldn’t have been spent on creating the alien because we barely saw any of it in the badly lit scenes. The only sure way we knew it was around was from the screams and moans from all the characters it had absorbed and now forms part of its being. Yeah, a bit like The Blob and Slither, both of which are fantastic body horror B movies. But the key thing about what made these movies great was that the audience could actually SEE the deformed monstrosities! All we could see here were shadows and bits of absorbed characters moaning in pain. There aren’t actually any clear shots of the alien in action, only of characters shooting at it, hiding from it, or running from it, which gets really dull after a while.
Acting all round was horrendous with the exception of perhaps Milena Radulović in the main role as the Doctor tasked with heading down the borehole to collect specimens. Every other actor delivered lines almost completely devoid of any discernable emotion while the content of those lines didn’t provide much information to advance the plot. The science was also murky at best. One character explained that the virus could not survive the cold which is why it needed a host to keep it warm, but the Doctor could somehow warp that theory and escape the detection of the alien just by drenching herself in cold water. How this was possible was never explained and neither were plenty of other happenings like why did this alien only decide to make an appearance towards the end of the film? Why did it need to absorb so many people if it only needed one host to survive? Why do you need two elevator shafts inside the hole? And most importantly …
Why even bother making this movie if you are not even going to show the alien?
Verdict — Dig a hole, make it deep, and throw this movie inside.
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