The Rig (2010)

(In French, On Cable TV, December 2022) I suspected going into The Rig that it wouldn’t be good. A low-profile low-budget theatrical release really made for the direct-to-DVD market of the time, it quickly falls into very familiar territory, as a crew of workers in an isolated oil rig find themselves fighting off a xenomorph, er, monster coming from the bottom of the sea. The Alien references are stated outright, but that doesn’t really excuse a very familiar screenplay that doesn’t try to do anything different with the formula. Someone competent could have done something interesting with the isolation of the characters, the limited space of the rig and perhaps even something about the creatures or the human interactions. But director Peter Atencio is stuck with a dull script and a thin budget, and The Rig is what happens when making a movie is a producer-defined job for everyone. It does have the advantage of being exactly the film you expect—you’ve got no one else to blame if you expect too much.