The Abyss was one of a trio of late-80s movies, along with DeepStar Six and Leviathan, set in seafloor habitats miles beneath the surface of the water. In this case, the crew are working in an experimental deep-sea drilling platform on the ocean floor. Directed by James Cameron, who also directed Aliens, The Terminator and Titanic, the cast includes Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Michael Biehn. With such a cast and crew, not to mention a huge budget, The Abyss was expected to be a blockbuster. It wasn't. But it's still a great dive movie.

The story opens with Harris and his crew working on the bottom when a US nuclear submarine sinks nearby for reasons unknown. A team of SEALs drops down to meet them and use their station as a base to investigate the sub's mishap.

Upon reaching the bottom, though, the leader of the SEALs, Michael Biehn, begins experiencing High Pressure Nervous Syndrome (HPNS), which, unknown to the others, slowly turns him into a paranoid schizophrenic. Up until this point, everything about The Abyss is great. Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to add a second storyline here involving aliens on the seafloor. Either story would have been fine by itself. Together, they turn The Abyss into a very long, slightly unfocused movie.

Make no mistake about it, though, there's a tremendous amount of underwater footage here, from the divers working outside the station, to the exploration of the sub, to the long submersible scenes. The result is one of the best dive movies ever made.

Even the diving science is interesting, if a bit overblown. For instance, Ed Harris makes a very deep dive with a liquid hydrocarbon breathing-solution filling his lungs. Such solutions have actually been used but have been found impractical. Divers have to work way too hard to extract oxygen from them and then become prone to lung infections after they're drained. And divers who descend too quickly to great depths, say in excess of 600 feet, are indeed prone to HPNS, which causes their neural circuits to run a bit haywire. But the results are severely distorted vision rather than paranoid thought patterns. But paranoid works better in the movies. As the Harris character explains of the SEAL leader, "He's operating on his own, he's cut off from his chain of command, he's showing signs of pressure-induced psychosis and he's got a nuclear weapon."

Great stuff, all. We love this movie. The Special Edition version of the DVD is worth the extra price for the hour-long documentary on the making of the film.