“Deep Rising” is less of a movie and more like watching someone play an arcade shooting game. It’s like “Aliens” meets “Titanic” but with only the action and none of the charm. It’s a disappointment from director Stephen Sommers (“The Mummy”).

In “Deep Rising”, John Finnegan (Treat Williams “The Phantom”) gets hired to give a boat ride to a group of mercenaries with no question asked. Eventually, he finds out that they’re going to hijack a cruise ship. However, they then discover that the ship has already been taken over by some horrifying creatures. Now, it’s a race to survive before they all sink with the ship.

Easily the best performance comes from Famke Janssen (“X-Men”, “GoldenEye”) as Trillian St. James, a thief that was caught on the ship and put in the brig so she avoids the initial monster attack. She has some personality but isn’t given all that much to do. Treat Williams is disposable as Finnegan. Wes Studi (“Mystery Men”, “Heat”), Anthony Heald (“Silence of the Lambs”), Cliff Curtis (“Sunshine”) and Djimon Hounsou (“Blood Diamond”) all appear so there are a lot of famous faces here but the writing is so bad when compared to films such as “Aliens” that you don’t care about them. The creatures are a bit like the Xenomorph in the “Alien” movies with hidden mouths and lots of teeth. The special effects have aged pretty poorly.

The monsters pop up and get blasted before disappearing. They then pop up again a few minutes later, kill someone and get blasted again. This is pretty much all the movie is. Where is the fun in only getting to watch a movie that feels like a game I could be playing in the arcade? This movie has lacklustre effects (it looks about as good as “Anaconda”) when you compare it to other monster films such as “Jurassic Park”, “Lake Placid” and “The Relic”. Famke Janssen is good but that’s it.