The US Navy enlist the help of a group of scientists, lead by Dr Norman Johnson (Dustin Hoffman), to help them study
a crashed spaceship, they've discovered 1000ft below the sea on the ocean floor.
Joined by fellow scientists Harry Adams (Samuel Jackson) and Beth Halpern (Sharon Stone), they discover the crashed spaceship is actually from Earth, from the year 2048 (maybe its the Event Horizon?). They also find a huge glowing sphere in the ship's cargo hold, which the crew were apparently trying to bring back.
With bad weather hampering the Navy from retreiving the scientists, things start to go a bit peculiar on their underwater base. One of the stations crew, Fletcher (played by rap artist Queen Latifa), is stung to death by Jellyfish whilst outside, and then the crew start receiving cryptic messages on the computer, apparently from the sphere itself, who calls itself Jerry.
From this point onwards though, the plot starts getting a bit pointless. Instead of the story shedding some light on why these things have been happening, or what this has to do with the sphere, we are treated to more weird goings on, as they are attacked by a giant squid, and then the station catches fire, killing some of the crew. Things get weirder (and increasingly more pointless) as multiple copies of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" start appearing around the base (which might explain the appearance of the giant squid).
Based on a book by Michael Crichton, the film is very reminiscent of "Event Horizon", which wasn't a very good film either (and in itself was reminiscent of Galaxy of Terror), what with all these weird things happening, that seem to have been conjured up from the crews imagination. The plot was also too slow moving for my liking, and the performances were very flat all round, which is not what I would have expected from a cast of this calibre.
This all goes to prove that an $80million budget and a star studded cast does not necessarily a good film make.
