The Abyss (PG-13)
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Written and directed by James Cameron. This came out in 1989, and I'm fairly sure I saw it on TV within a few years after that. But by the time I watched it again in 2024, I didn't remember much of anything about it. I knew it was underwater, and I knew there were aliens or something, but that's it. I was thinking it might have been a sci-fi horror movie, but it's really not. First and foremost, I consider it a disaster movie, and secondarily it's science fiction (but not horror). So, what can I say about the movie? The plot was okay, the acting was fine, and there were some revolutionary CGI effects, which I think hold up fairly well.

It begins with a nuclear submarine crashing, for reasons I won't go into. Then, a SEAL team, led by Lt. Coffey, is sent to a submersible oil rig, which was designed by Dr. Lindsey Brigman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who goes there with the team. The rig is under the command of her estranged husband, Virgil "Bud" Brigman (Ed Harris), and there are a few other people working there who I don't feel the need to mention specifically. The mission is to use the rig to search for the submarine, and find out if there are any survivors. (There are not.) Things go awry because of a hurricane on the surface of the ocean, and the rig is badly damaged, and some people die. Making things worse is the fact that the SEALs have a secondary secret mission, which I won't spoil. But Coffey goes kind of nuts because of pressure sickness or whatever. Meanwhile, Lindsey occasionally sees things in the ocean that cannot really be explained any way other than extraterrestrials (though personally I thought they just as well could have come from a terrestrial underwater civilization). Of course, no one believes her at first, but eventually they all see evidence of what she'd seen. And... I really don't want to spoil any more of the story, except to say there's a happy ending.

Overall, I think it was a pretty decent movie, and I'm glad to have seen it again, but in the long run it's not that important to me.