The Abyss (1989) • 30 Years Later

A civilian diving team is enlisted to search for a lost nuclear submarine and face danger while encountering an alien aquatic species.

James Cameron’s sci-fi movie The Abyss is now 30 years old, and it’s still an impressive experience thanks to its pioneering VFX and filming techniques. It also remains a tense underwater thriller and romance.

When a nuclear submarine (“World War Three in a can”) sinks in mysterious circumstances, an underwater drilling platform called Deep Core, operated by Virgil ‘Bud’ Brigman (Ed Harris) and his team, is enlisted to assist a SEAL deployment. Bud’s accompanied by his ex-wife Lyndsay (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who designed Deep Core, to salvage the submarine before the Russians do. Later, a hurricane cuts off communication to the outside world while political tensions over the incident escalate… and, following an encounter with “something else”, the SEAL commander (suffering from high-pressure nervous syndrome) launches a missile at what may be a Non-Terrestrial Intelligence (NTI). Only Bud, in a high-tech diving suit, can venture into the trench to disarm the missile…