When I saw Proteus on TV at age 15, I had already watched Leviathan, The Thing, Deepstar Six, Alien and somehow still had a great time. I guess I'm more jaded now. Made in 1995, this British production captures perfectly the atmosphere (and repetition) of the survival horror video games that would be released soon after, such as the first Resident Evil on the PS1. Games that I used to play way back then, and that I don’t play anymore. That explains the discrepancy in my enjoyment of this movie 30 years apart.
The story is about heroin smugglers stranded at sea who come across an oil rig in which illegal genetic experiments were being conducted. You can figure out the rest.
Besides the first 20 minutes and the last 20 minutes, Proteus is all about the main characters wandering quizzically around dark corridors intercut with endless POV shots of the monster just roaming around the oil rig, not even attacking anyone. We see loads of guns, but nobody is shooting them. Without a bigger budget, the director, Bob Keen (make-up guy on Hellraiser), couldn’t spice up the middle section with practical effects and creature transformations, and resorted to overdoing the dim lighting and dumb jump scares to try and keep things tense. The little money he had to work with went into the oversized final creature.
One bone I have to pick is that it’s not kosher to have an opener that shows the viewer that the story is being told in flashback, to then have an open-ended conclusion. I chalk this script issue down to the screenwriter (same author of the book Slimer which the film is based on) not knowing how to start the movie with a bang, and therefore he created a prologue that doesn’t really match the epilogue.
It’s not as good as any of the movies I mentioned earlier. I’d say it’s on the same level (5/10) as The Rift from 1990. That one didn’t have a good atmosphere at all, but understood better what fans of this subgenre want to see on screen: bullets, squibs, blood, what happens to the creature when it gets hit – we get none of that in Proteus. Both of them are better than that crappy, big budget CGI fest Deep Rising, but then again nearly everything is, even Virus (1999).
Trivia: Proteus was made in 1995 and released as “Resident Evil” in Norway. We know the first Resident Evil game was launched in 1996. I assume that by the time this straight-to-video movie came out over there, the game was already a massive hit and the Norwegian distributor chose to capitalize on it.
Right now you can watch it in English for free on YouTube.
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