The Abyss (2010)

The Abyss is a movie which I had not seen before. It tells the story of a diving team that are asked to find a lost nuclear submarine, but find something else they were not expecting. It’s the first of Cameron’s films where he used extensive CGI to tell his story. When you look at the scene in Terminator 2 where the T-1000 goes through the glass of the helicopter you see that this movie allowed it. Cameron’s use of CGI has only increased over the year resulting in the almost complete CGI movie Avatar.

The movie supposedly was a hell for the actors to do. Because the movie is set under water and is set in cramped spaces it’s something I can imagine. At first I though the movie might have been filmed at sea, but found out that it was recorded in an unfinished nuclear reactor (if you enter the coordinates 35.037° N 81.512° W in Google maps you can still see the building). So the set still exists, but as you can see in the picture below it doesn’t feel impressive anymore. It’s also clear how small the “abyss” really is:

Part of the movie was shot in caves.

I was a lot more impressed by this movie as I was by Avatar. The fact that it has been shot in difficult circumstances (even Cameron almost drowned during filming), has great sets and a story which captivated me left me with a “Wow!” feeling, resulting in a perfect score.