The Rift, a 1990s sci-fi horror/thriller film, is our pick for today’s video. The Endless Descent is another name for it. The film is directed by Juan Piquer Simon and tells the narrative of a submarine rescue attempt that goes awry because of mutated monsters created by the business that sent the submarine. The fact that these animals were primarily produced as bioweapons adds to the seriousness of the problem.
Films like Leviathan, The Abyss, The Evil Below, DeepStar Six, and Lords of the Deep helped to boost the amount of underwater-themed films in the 1990s. Despite being made on a shoestring budget, The Rift managed to show numerous underwater species very well. It is frequently likened to previous aquatic creature films such as Leviathan (1989) and Alien (1979). This is a little unfair given the other two films were much more high-end due to their larger budgets.
Lee Ermey is accompanied by other cast members such as Jack Scalia, who maintains a great haircut throughout the film, Deborah Adair, who rivals Scalia in her ability to pull off a messed-up mullet, Ray Wise, Emilio Linder, John Toles Bey, and Ely Pouget.
The film was shot on the outskirts of Madrid and never saw the light of day. Despite this, it manages to be a gripping and engaging horror film. Despite the film’s modest budget, the special effects are more than enough for a 1990 feature. The film’s score was composed by Joel Goldsmith, who stuck to the tried-and-true string synths that were employed in practically every 90s horror film.
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This Is What Happens When Several Genetic Mutation Experiments Go Wrong At Once
The movie opens with a shirtless Wick Hayes (played by Jack Scalia) being woken up from his sleep. His ideal 90s poofy hairstyle has not been affected despite being asleep for hours. He is called to Washington DC because an experimental submarine called the ‘Siren I’ that he had designed, had gone awry.
Wick is made to join a rescue team alongside an experienced NATO crew, with the objective of rescuing the Siren I. And what better name to give the rescue sub than Siren II. Maybe this was a bad omen; you wouldn’t name a cruise ship Titanic II, even though hitting an iceberg is unlikely in today’s day and time due to global warming melting all the icebergs.
The crew in the sub consists of salami, teriyaki sauce, olives, mayonnaise, and bacon. Just kidding, it is unfortunately just a bunch of humans, one of them being the token black actor for diversity reasons. The crew hated Wick though because they were all told that Siren I went down because he had installed a self-destruct button into it. Captain Phillips (played by R. Lee Ermey) isn’t the warmest and most welcoming guy either, especially not when it comes to Wick. Rather, he’s like those overly strict, discipline-obsessed teachers’, who really got on your nerves throughout the school.
Nick’s ex-wife Nina (played by Deborah Adair) is a Lieutenant who is also a part of the team and now they must cooperate on the ship, much to Nina’s distaste. As the sub moves through the ice, it pulls a Titanic by taking damage, because global warming wasn’t as rampant in the 90s as it is now (the world got hotter only after Christina Aguilera released her hit song Dirrrty in the 2000s).
Wick is mad at the military for altering his sub design, as it almost landed them dead. He gets into a fight with the captain and is banned from entering the control room. The captain thinks that the other scientist Robbins (played by Ray Wise) can handle everything better.
In the control room, they detect a signal. They suspect it is the black box’s signal from Siren I and is coming from a rift, deep in the ocean. Much to their surprise, there are plants growing in that area which should technically not be possible as photosynthesis is biologically impossible in that depth. But since the phenomenon has happened and the plot needs to move forward, Nina needs to get her hands on the seaweed sample.
The captain sends a guy, Sven, into the ocean to a) get the sample and b) report on the wreckage from Siren I, because the ship is convinced that the radar is acting up due to the sub being nearby. Sven sends the weed sample up and swims downwards to investigate the wreckage. There, he comes across a corpse of one of the crew members from Siren I. He freaks out and is soon attacked by tentacles sprouting out of something. The waters get bloody as he dies in the hands (legs, whatever) of the creature. His friend blames himself for not rescuing him but people console him by saying that there was nothing he could’ve done. The captain orders for the mission to continue despite the death, because he hasn’t had his character development arc YET.
The sub is then attacked by a creature that looks like gigantic iceberg lettuce that is white and flashy. They manage to ward it off by reversing the polarity (because this trick always works) and are then hit with another problem – the sub is sinking into the abyss. So obviously, the main character has to save the day now. He succeeds, but the captain is a bitter hater and lectures him for not following orders.
Nina’s research shows that the seaweed absorbs high amounts of oxygen and discharges toxins. Meanwhile, the black box signal is still present. The sub enters that area and the signal starts acting up (just like the captain does every time Wick breathes against his wishes).
The crew suits up and gets equipped with guns that look like the stuff you’d get at Laser Tags. They take a boat to the rift. They enter a cave-like place, where one of the guys gets attacked by a creature that looks like an oversized fly and a female genital with two brains simultaneously. But it was not the only one of its kind there. Soon, the others begin to pop up and the crew engages in a more realistic Laser Tag Shootout. They also end up shooting that guy in the end, to end his suffering.
There are other weird monsters as well and after tackling them, the crew bumps into the crew of the Siren I where everyone looks like they have been roasted. They get their hands on a floppy disk in the sub.
Meanwhile, in Siren II, the weed sample has encompassed the entire lab; turning it moldy and disgusting. Muller goes to touch it and it attacks him. The thing takes over his entire body, making him look like a fungus and he dies. The weed overgrew only because it had found its way into the water supply of the submarine.
After another monster attack, they get back to Siren II and watch the contents of the floppy disk. Turns out, the company they were working for (that is Contek) was creating bioweapons and wanted to accelerate its evolution. For that, they had conducted genetic engineering experiments illegally. But they failed spectacularly and instead, gave rise to all the weird, slimy, monstrous, mutant creatures.
They go back to the cave to rescue their fellow member Ana and engage in some more laser tag. She is killed by weed tentacles. The crew finds eggs with alien-like creatures in it and fights a monster that looks like a carnal flower, while the audience is hit with a plot twist.
Turns out, Robbins is a double agent for Contek. He decides to lock the others and flee in an escape pod. Unfortunately for him, Wick had designed the ship and uses a worthless microchip to make him believe that Robbins couldn’t do anything without it.
The captain and Robbins fight and he kills Robbins by brushing his face against the seaweed infestation on Muller’s body. In the end, the redemption arc for the captain comes to a full circle as he aids Wick and Nina escape and stays back to die as the submarine self-destructs because the weed was taking over him. As the movie closes, Wick and Nina indulge in some romance because what better way to resolve a monster attack.
The Rift is a pretty solid underwater monster movie but all B-horror flicks face scrutiny from the critics. It didn’t make that big of a ‘rift’ in the box office either. Also, R. Lee Ermey isn’t particularly fond of the movie himself but at the end of the day, it is all subjective.
The movie was quite entertaining and the best thing about it is the pacing, as the movie builds up the tension from the very start instead of beating around the bush. Another cool addition to it would be using many creatures instead of one.
A sole, big, monstrous creature lurking in the depths of the sea, attacking ships and submarines has been done plenty of times so watching a movie with many horrifying creatures was quite the change of air. And let’s not forget the ‘interesting’ designs that some of them have.
One of the best things about the movie was the visual aesthetic used in the scenes with the control room. The lighting in particular was impeccable, especially for a B-grade movie. It had the 90’s steampunk anime vibe going on with the blue lighting and the technology. Using neon green in the gadgets and contrasting it with the blue lighting worked like a charm. It also has the arcade gaming vibe to it. You really have to watch it to know.
Horrific Sea Creatures – Explored!
The Rift aka Endless Descent has some pretty horrific creatures. Some would even say they look hilarious. First, let’s get down to how these creatures came into being.
While the crew from Siren II were down in the underwater cave, they came across Siren I. Everyone was found dead and there was an intriguing floppy disk. After running that disk in the Siren II, they learn that the existence of the creatures and the submarine getting wrecked were not coincidences and rather, a part of something bigger.
The government was using the submarine for a biological experiment with DNA because they wanted to create bioweapons. They had also built a DNA accelerator, which was supposed to speed up the creature’s evolution but things went south and the mutants attacked everyone. Government involvement in villainous actions happens to be quite the popular plot point – think James Gunn’s Suicide Squad.
Now that you know where the creatures originated from, it’s time to take a ‘dive’ into all those mutations who were cool enough to give the crew a hard time but not cool enough to be used in Ben 10’s Omnitrix.
The first creature we see is when Sven goes over twenty-two thousand feet deep into the sea, which shouldn’t statistically be possible. Even if he wasn’t killed, he would really die while ascending by sustaining a brain injury. On seeing the corpse of the Siren I crew member, he takes its pictures. Maybe the nearby giant octopi didn’t like it because not everyone is fond of the camera and the press. Its tentacles sprout out and kill Sven, but we don’t get to see much of the creature after that.
The next creature that appears right after is the thing that looks like a weird white glob, mimicking the appearance of the lettuce you get in burgers but thicker and bigger. It latches onto the submarine and pulls it down into the rift. Attacks help bring out the heroism in Wick, who handles the situation by ‘reversing the polarity’ because being a Doctor Who fanboy is the ideal lifestyle.
The third creature we see is the sample of the seaweed itself, even though it’s not really a ‘creature’ but just a scary plant. Move over Pitcher Plant and Venus Fly Trap, a new dangerous plant is in the house now. As Nina works in her lab, a fish jumps out of the water. The weed was placed with the fishes because who would’ve thought this creature would be dangerous. She spots that the thing had latched itself onto the fish and acted like an infestation,
Later, she shows the Captain the weed. It has grown alarmingly fast and has now infested the entire aquarium. Nina theorizes that the seaweed absorbs a lot of oxygen and gives out concentrated toxins. And the toxins weren’t just regular toxins, it was too strong, especially for their size. It was a result of several complex mutations and if it was allowed to grow on the surface, there would be an ecological disaster.
The thing needed water to grow so it couldn’t go out of bounds while being confined to an aquarium but it wasn’t stupid. It managed to find its way into the aqueduct system of the ship and grew tremendously. As Muller enters a room, he finds himself surrounded by the weed, which looks moldy and disgusting, like fungus on steroids. He touches it, trying to figure out what’s going on and it latches itself onto him. The weed gradually begins to take over his body, turning him into a fungus party house. When Nina finds him, Muller is practically covered in the weed while the thing probes into his brain region. A couple of scenes later, Ana encounters the weed near the DNA accelerator in Siren I and it drags her in.
During the climax, the weed helps round out the captain’s redemption arc in the eyes of Wick. As they try to escape the submarine in an escape pod, Capt. Phillips lets Wick and Nina pass and stays back himself to die as the sub self-destructs. When Wick is taken aback by this decision, the captain raises his palm and shows him that he had fallen victim to the weed as well.
The next creature is the stuff that attacked one of the crew members in the cave; the one that looked like a female genital with two brains and also like an oversized fly at the same time. Many others look the same pop-up, and the crew plays live-action arcade shooting with them, shooting its head because suddenly a bunch of scientists has an impeccable aim. Plus, the creatures burst out after being shot as you’d see in video games.
Two other creatures join the party. One looks like a snake and grunts like a low-budget CGI dinosaur while the other looks like an oversized seahorse with a taste for flesh.
On the way back to the Siren I, the doctor of the ship falls into the water. Suddenly, a creature swims up to him immediately and kills him. It is hard to say what the creature was but it did look like an eel to some extent. As it was able to kill the doctor so easily, it can be assumed that it had sharp fangs as well.
As the crew enters a giant cavern, they come across what looks like really big eggs. Well, it was less of an egg and more of a uterus with a fetus in it. The fetus looked very similar to aliens, with its wide head, big slanted eyes, and a super narrow chin. It also cried like a kid, except its cry was more like an angry cat mixed with a crow.
Lastly, they come across the boss-level creature of the movie. This is the stuff that comes up in video games after you’ve completed all levels and have finally reached the boss level. The thing is stuck to the walls of the cave and has fifteen limbs. The middle is circular and the limbs branch out from there. It has a head that looks mostly like its limbs, but the tip has the face of the creature. It attacks Skeets and eats him up. The others try to shoot it but unlike the other creatures, this one does not go down from mere gunshots. Video game inspiration is heavy in this movie and that is made more apparent when the creature is finally taken down by shooting into barrels. This is a common tactic in gaming, where the character shoots a barrel and there’s an explosion. This triggers a chain reaction of explosions, destroying the accelerator and the facility itself, finally killing the creature.
As the scene ends, Robbins is seen smiling at his screen, claiming ‘Mission Accomplished. Turns out, he is a government agent after all. After the mutations from the experiment went out of control, they sent Robbins with the Siren II crew to make sure the mutations were eliminated. And he does so at the cost of the lives of several others so he’s the bad guy after all, not the creatures.
The creatures had no particular objectives. They were advanced and lethal evolutions of regular sea creatures. For example, a normal octopus wouldn’t need to attack and eat humans but these ones do. The same goes for the monstrous eel that killed the doctor. It’s hard to say whether the oversized fly and the boss-level creature were evolved forms of other normal aquatic animals or whether they were a completely new life form because the designs were unlike anything is ever seen before.
Contek originally wanted to probably use these creatures in war, while keeping it under control and confined to themselves. The seaweed in particular would be adept at taking out entire opponent fleets and would be an asset for the navy. The other creatures would also be able to take down opponents easily but still, they are pretty easy to kill. All you need is one shot. Maybe that is because things went haywire before the mutations could mutate properly, to be strong enough to sustain damage from weapons.
Is ‘The Rift’ a B-Version Of 1989’s ‘Leviathan’?
Science fiction horror had been gaining tremendous momentum throughout the 80s. Sometime in the late 80s though, especially around 1989, a particular subgenre of sci-fi horror saw itself being catapulted into the mainstream – undersea sci-fi horror. Around five films of this sort came out during this time, namely Leviathan, The Abyss, DeepStar Six, Lords Of The Deep, and of course, The Rift.
Leviathan and The Rift may be perceived as different movies; being under the same genre does not mean that the two movies will follow the path of one another. However, they do have some parallels between them. It’s not a very ‘on your face’ parallel but quite easy to spot nonetheless. Probably because The Rift was heavily inspired by Leviathan, which is the most critically acclaimed and the most popular undersea sci-fi horror.
In Leviathan, the cast goes for an expedition under the sea where they come across an abandoned, sunken Russian ship called ‘the Leviathan’. They unleash a disease that turns people into amphibious monsters.
In The Rift, the Siren II also goes for an undersea expedition to retrieve the Siren I, where the seaweed infests people and kills them after turning them into the mold. They do sound similar but there are some key differences, the most notable one being that the crew in The Rift did not turn into monsters and instead, just died.
Leviathan follows a similar pattern when compared to other creature-oriented films where the monster appears midway into the movie. Till before that, the audience is introduced to the cast and lots of technology. The dialogues deal with big, technological words which might not make any sense to the people actually working in that field (marine scientists probably do not deal with underwater problems by reversing the polarity). The monster in Leviathan finds its way into the deep-sea mining platform. The disease is stored in a bottle of vodka and drinking it causes the crew members to mutate into fishy, gelatinous creatures.
The Rift has a scene where the seaweed creatively finds its way into the aqueducts and then grows out of control, but it has no correlations to diseases or transformations. It is simply a plant capable of causing an ecological disaster. Maybe its high toxin content could cause diseases but frankly, the cast wouldn’t last long enough with the weed nearby to see the day where they begin to mutate from the disease.
So, even though there are uncanny resemblances between 1989’s Leviathan and 1990s The Rift, the latter is not a B-movie version of the former. It can be said that Juan Piquer Simon was simply influenced by George P. Cosmatos’ impeccable sci-fi undersea horror and used a couple of elements here and there, but in the end, the two movies are different in terms of both, monsters, and objectives.
Why Should You Watch ‘The Rift’?
The Rift is not particularly known for its box office collection and for many viewers, that can be a determining factor as to whether they want to watch a particular movie or not. But you need to remember that The Rift came out during a time when the undersea sci-fi horror market was getting saturated as several movies of the same sort were popping up left and right. On top of that, the other movies in this department such as James Cameron’s Alien and The Abyss or Cosmatos’ Leviathan are all high-budget sci-fi movies. On the contrary, The Rift was produced on a limited budget and still manages to hold its own against these monster budget films (pun intended), which is only testament to the entertainment factor of the movie. When it comes to B-movies, The Rift has the throne.
One particular weak point in The Rift is a very obvious one – the performance of the cast. The dialogue delivery or emotional expression does not feel convincing at all. Luckily, all is not lost when you have R. Lee Ermey playing a key role. He holds his own with his portrayal of the Captain against the rest of the cast, and gives a performance compelling enough to make you ignore the others.
A strength that The Rift seems to play on is its aesthetic, visuals, and gore. As the heads of the creatures are shot, they burst into blood and organs so the gore is good enough to keep ardent fans of horror satisfied. The seaweed infestation of the human body is so gross that it is actually good and it looks extremely convincing as well. Despite being a low-budget film shot over 30 years ago, Muller never looks like a bad case of CGI while his entire body has been taken over. In the scene where the Captain shows Wick and Nina that the seaweed had latched onto him, it looks gross because it is convincing.
The Rift also tries to utilize bits and pieces of humor here and there, but it misses more often than it hits. That is not really a problem though, because it is a very minor part of the movie. R. Lee Ermey’s character Captain Phillips undergoes a great character development arc. In the beginning, he is one of those annoying, obsessed with protocol and societal talk kind of a guy, who rains hellfire on the main character Wick. He keeps blaming Wick for the demise of Siren I and criticizes him to no end. By the end of the movie, he warms up to Wick, realizing that Wick was not at fault, and ultimately, sacrifices himself to save Wick and Nina.
The Rift is available on US VHS as Endless Descent. It was also released as Region 1 Blu-Ray in the year 2016.
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