The last article I wrote for Elements of Madness, rather ironically, was a 4K home media review of another James Cameron film, Titanic, which hit 4K Blu-ray last month. Now, as if churning out the rest of his catalog and shouting “There! Are you all happy now?!” Cameron has released three more of his catalog titles in the Ultra HD format, those being Aliens (1986), and the previously unavailable in high-definition True Lies (1994) and The Abyss (1989). While their physical media won’t be on the market until March 12, each of the three films have already been released on digital storefronts. As someone who gushed and raved about how Titanic is, in all honesty, probably my favorite film of all time, The Abyss, despite my mother’s intense love for the film, has always existed as one of my major James Cameron blind spots. Perhaps it was its unattainable nature in modern formats that kept me away from it, or maybe it was just because The Abyss was always “that movie my mom liked so much,” but it took me until just yesterday to finally surrender to the film’s mysterious allure, and to dig into the film in full 4K glory.
For reference, I viewed the film in 4K Dolby Vision with Dolby Atmos sound via Apple TV. Mysteriously, Apple TV currently only has the theatrical cut of the film available, and only later did I find out that the special edition director’s cut was available via MoviesAnywhere. For this review, I will be reviewing the theatrical cut.
A still from James Cameron’s THE ABYSS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios and Lightstorm Entertainment.
When the USS Montana, a US Naval nuclear submarine, sinks in the middle of the Caribbean after a mysterious interaction with an unknown organism, the race between the Americans and the Soviets to its wreckage begins. A SEAL Team is sent to the wreckage via a deep sea drilling rig, led by Lt. Coffey (Michael Biehn), and supervised by the rig’s designer, Dr. Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). The SEAL team’s search for the vessel is assisted by the civilian drilling team of the drilling rig, led by Virgil “Bud” Brigman (Ed Harris), who is both foreman and Lindsey’s estranged husband. As both teams begin their trek to the deep sea wreckage, tensions begin to flare between the military and civilian teams, between Bud and Lindsey, between Coffey and everyone as his paranoia brought on by high-pressure nervous syndrome takes a hold on his psyche, and soon, with organisms beyond the understanding of human comprehension. What the team discovers at the ocean floor will change the course of human history forever.
Within the span of Cameron’s filmography, The Abyss really does mark a pretty poetic bridging point between the filmmaker he was when he made Aliens, contrasted with the filmmaker he was when he made Titanic. There is a middle-ground found in The Abyss that fuses both the wonder of the unknown world of the ocean floor with the terror that the unknown holds. Seeing Cameron dip his literal and figurative toes into deep sea exploration in this film feels like a more positive version of watching a future drug addict take their first hit of the drug that will eventually consume their life (mere days ago Variety’s “Directors on Directors” series featuring Barbie director Greta Gerwig and Cameron premiered, with this interview being the only one in the series not conducted in-person as Cameron was broadcasting remotely from the literal sea floor). While Cameron from The Terminator (1984) onward has always been perhaps the most ambitious filmmaker out there, The Abyss is where I have finally discovered the true jumping off point into who Cameron is today.
Narratively, I don’t find The Abyss to be quite as strong as many of Cameron’s other, more highly recognized films. Cameron has never been as strong of a writer as he is a director, and this comes out particularly when it comes to structuring dialogue around whatever grandiose story he’s telling. The Abyss, ironically, doesn’t suffer from the same problem that films like Titanic and the Avatar films can sometimes fall victim to, but rather the film falls into some unfortunate narrative conventionality that is uncharacteristic of Cameron’s other writing endeavors. Granted, this becomes less-and-less of an issue as the film goes on since the film’s absolutely stunning visual effects and creative creature and set designs more than make up for a little bit of storytelling blandness.
As for its visuals, I now can truly say that I’m not sure why The Abyss doesn’t get the credit it deserves for its beautifully rendered digital effects. While Tron (1982) is often credited as the first film to heavily utilize computer generated imagery, and Cameron’s follow-up film to this one, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) is credited with putting it forth as a genuinely artful means of taking filmmaking to a level never seen before by audiences, it’s wild that The Abyss can look like this and still somehow remain the red-headed stepchild in relation to the previously mentioned films, all while doing it three whole years before T2 dropped. Of course, not every effect holds up in the light of 2023, but when 2023 films like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Flash release in theaters with nearly unfinished effects, to see a film that was shot during the Reagan administration look like this 34 years later is not just impressive, it’s worth celebrating.
Which it’s wild to consider that The Abyss remained stuck on 480p DVD for so long, completely skipping over the standard Blu-ray format and is only now being remastered into 4K. I hate that I was unable to see the film when it was in theaters for one night only on Dec. 6 (I unfortunately had a screening of The Iron Claw the very same night), but I’m happy to be able to see the film in its newly-minted best format possible now regardless. Interestingly enough, despite Titanic’s absolutely stellar 4K transfer, early reactions to the 4K transfers of Aliens, and especially for True Lies, are coming in cold, to say the absolute least. Strange color-grading, complete scrubbing of all film grain, and worst of all, AI-powered upscaling, have been used rampantly in those remasters, and have disappointed longtime fans of these films (I hope to dig into Aliens 4K Blu-ray release in March to see for myself). But for The Abyss, at least from my virgin eyes having never seen what the film looked like before said remaster, the results are generally satisfying.
The Abyss is a cold and dark film to begin with, lit by underpowered rig lights and shaded in the deep-blue, icy tones that the ocean floor has to offer within its absolute blackness. What makes The Abyss truly pop in its 4K remaster is its utilization of Dolby Vision, that gives the bioluminescence of the “Non-Terrestrial Intelligence” or NTI such a beautifully contrasted pop against the cold, dark ocean floor. These are the films that work so wonderfully in the format, and I so wish the film could return to theaters, particularly those of Dolby Cinema, just one more time so I could see it in its full big-screen glory. I didn’t notice any AI-upscaling used here, but perhaps the use of Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) to reduce the film’s natural film grain was used to “clean” the image up. While I don’t agree with the usage of that in heavy regards, the film is already so cold and sterile to begin with that much of this blends into the deep dark shadows of the film without notice, and it certainly is nowhere near as egregious as StudioCanal’s 4K remaster of Terminator 2: Judgment Day was in 2017.
Ed Harris as Bud Brigman in James Cameron’s THE ABYSS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios and Lightstorm Entertainment.
As for the film’s Dolby Atmos mix, it is unsurprisingly brilliant, with a fabulous usage of surround and height speakers to create a wonderfully immersive environment on the ocean floor. Though, I feel as if it would almost be impossible to make something like The Abyss sound bad in this format, as its setting is an absolute playground for exactly the type of immersion that Dolby Atmos provides. All punctuated by Alan Silvestri’s wonderfully awe-inspiring score that fills out the soundscape nicely.
Oddly, Apple TV does not provide The Abyss with any special features whatsoever in its digital release, but once again, MoviesAnywhere comes in clutch with a host of special features for the digital viewer. These features include:
- Special Edition Version of The Abyss (2h51m)
- Deep Dive: A Conversation with James Cameron (32m)
- The Legacy of The Abyss (24m)
- Under Pressure: Making The Abyss (59m)
- Theatrical Trailers
- Behind-the-Scenes Effects
- Visual Effects Reel
- Set Building Timelapses
Is The Abyss Cameron’s strongest film? Not particularly, but what it does is really gives you an idea of the type of filmmaker Cameron has transformed into over the course of his career, and is almost comically indicative of his style, his methodology, and his unabashed, and often alienating ambition that can cause his shoots, The Abyss very much so included, to be hotbeds of pressure and strained tensions, but always end up being cornerstones of technological breakthroughs for the format. The 4K HDR remaster of The Abyss is quite the looker as well, thankfully not falling prey to the lazy upscaling seen with True Lies, and it’s all the better for a film so beautifully realized in a time where films like this weren’t even thought possible. Cameron has always been at the forefront of blazing the trails of films to come decades after their initial release, and whatever CGI-leaden nonsense might’ve come from filmmakers far less talented than Cameron have come in The Abyss’s wake, there’s no denying the influence this film has held over the art of blockbuster filmmaking coming into the new millennium.
Available on December 12th, 2023.
Available on 4K UHD Blu-ray Combo Pack March 12th, 2024.
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Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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