Plot
As a ferocious
storm rages outside, a small group of experienced crew members on a oil
drilling rig settle down to ride it out. Isolated on the rig, their world is
turned upside down when one of their number goes missing and an extensive
search proves futile. They discover that a deadly creature has somehow made
it's way onto the rig and is stalking and killing the crew off one-by-one.
Review
Call it The Rig or better yet,
call it The Film You've Seen a Thousand Times Before and Will No Doubt
See a Thousand Times Again. Straight from the book of how to make
generic monster movies, The Rig sets itself up for failure right from
the start with a well-worn story, low budget effects and general sense of
"why did they bother to make it?" I can't be too harsh on the film
because it wasn't terrible. But I'd pretty much forgotten everyone's names
and what was going on about twenty minutes in. Even writing this review a
few days later is hard because it was so generic and so unmemorable that I'm
not sure whether I'm making things up that I thought I saw!
The Rig is competent but that's about it.
It's virtually ninety minutes of people either standing around talking and
waiting for a monster to kill them or said people walking around corridors
looking for the monster to kill them. There's nothing wrong with films recycling the
formula into whatever they like if they at least try and make it stand out
from the rest. Throw in some outrageous gore. Make it a comedy horror. Hire
some really famous has-beens and throw them all into the mixer. Wink at your
audience. Do anything different!
Unfortunately The Rig does none of those things and is content to
play it safe. Actually playing it safe doesn't do the film justice - it
doesn't even give itself chance to play for fear of getting hurt in the
process. Take the setting for instance. It was filmed on location at Mr
Charlie, a former deep sea oil rig now used as a training facility. Despite this, there's no atmosphere
whatsoever. You'd have thought the sprawling mass of corridors, rooms,
gangways, ladders and platforms would allow plenty of suspense to be built
up. But no, there's diddly squat. The monster is seen in spits and spurts for the
majority so you won't get an overly long look at it. But I'll give the film
props for using make-up effects for the most instead of relying on a CGI
creation. You can 'feel' the creature during the scenes in which it attacks
it's victims. These scenes are edited so badly in an attempt hide the
creature's blatantly obvious visual weaknesses but as a result, they end up
clumsy and rushed. In fact there's so little going on with the monster apart
from the attacks that the film could have worked just as well with a guy in
a mask doing the killing. The characters don't care where it came from or
what it wants. They surmise that it enjoys killing and that it can be killed
- and that's it. No hints about where it came from or what it is. The attack
scenes are brief and usually consist of the same sequence of events:
creature sneaks up on victim, grabs hold of them and then kills them
off-screen. Thus the gore is also lacking. There's a bit of blood and a few
slashings but nothing to get worked up about. Oh, and the creature is not a
huge toothy monster ready to swallow the rig up as it shows on the front
cover but more like a lizard-man ala Creature From the Black Lagoon.
Once again I'll use the word competent because
the actors are just that. They're not terrible, give decent performances and
such but you won't care for any of them. Such is the thinly-written nature
of their characters that there's little characterization to them barring
standard stereotype. They're just hollow, derivative characters with no life
or soul at all. Attempts to throw in some sub-plots about sibling
rivalry and a romantic part just fall flat and eat valuable screen time from
monster-munching moments. It's a shallow ploy to inject some dramatization
and sentiment into the film but it's unnecessary since they're both
forgotten about as soon as the monster starts killing off the crew. William
Forsythe 'stars' and I use that term mildly since he's hardly in it and when
he's on screen, both his gut and his tash take up most of the screen.
Forsythe can be intense when he needs to be but this script doesn't throw
him a bone at all and gives him the role of head foreman or whatever he's
supposed to be (ie. the boss). Token black guys, tough Latino chicks and
lone wolf soldiers make up the rest of the crew so be prepared for the usual
clichés.
Verdict
The Rig
isn't anything special nor is it anything atrocious. It's
just.......well....it's just there. Kudos to the team for using real make-up
effects and a suited-up stuntman for the creature because it really makes a
difference. But that's about the only thing I'll remember about this. Never
want to see it again but not for any particular reason other than I'll no
doubt be watching the same film over-and-over again in many years to come
with the endless supply of "creature on the loose in a confined space"
horror flicks.
