Show Review: The Rig

[HighPlainsGrifter]

Synopsis: A deep sea platform in the North Sea loses communication and starts experiencing some strange things. It's a mystery thriller as the crew struggles to figure it out.

I was intrigued by the idea of an oil rig movie/show. The science that goes into plumbing the earth 2 miles deep is impressive. I don't own or lease a derrick but I've seen the complications of broken bits, overthrust shale diverting the head, gas blowouts, and every imaginable human fuckup making the process harder. Doing it at the bottom of the sea is foreign to me but it must be orders of magnitude more complex than what I see at the surface. With a sea based platform you have the isolation factor increasing tensions with the crew, then add a supernatural mystery and I thought this could be really good.

The Good
I really enjoyed the variety of dialects and accents in the characters. Real accents, not some exaggerated affectation by an overpaid blowhard from Santa Monica. Dialogue is delivered clearly, never allowing thick accents to cloud the dialogue. This cast is a terrific blend of European characters, as you would expect to see on a rig in the North Sea. Iain Glen is stellar as Magnus. Owen Teale's Hutton has a great character arc. Emily Hampshire is good in her role. Not great, but good. Plus she's nice to look at. She reminds me of a cross between Ione Skye and Lili Taylor in Say Anything. Her real life relationship drama is a bit of a dumpster fire, lol, but I'll let you look it up for yourself if you want. Some of the lesser characters are...lesser. You can tell they filmed scenes out of order because some actors' emotional energy and vocal inflection doesn't match the other actors and will even vary in the middle of an act. Filming out of order is totally normal but some of these characters aren't practiced actors and it shows. Sometimes it sounds like they're reading the scene for the first time and guessing at the emotional tone. Almost like they did a table read before filming and spliced in the dialogue. This could be helped by filming scenes more linear and with live dialogue, but that's not up to me. Sometimes the special effects are too loud to allow live dialogue. In that case, you better get into character and understand the scene before the table read.

They use a fair amount of proper driller terminology. Not a lot, but enough to make it interesting for a guy like me. Most of the time terminology is deliberately generic but occasionally they reference something legit like condensate rather than just saying "vapor."

One of my favorite lines said in a Scottish accent: "There are no fans left for shit to hit." -Hutton

The premise is solid. [spoiler alert] Oil rig(s) in the North Sea are drilling through the Permian layer which was buried 300 Million years ago. The Permian extinction killed 90% of all life on earth. Running a drill bit through the Permian layer releases a time capsule of ancient spores which infect humans, causing a variety of symptoms. It's an excellent premise with a lot of potential but the writers fuck it up in a never ending variety of ways.

The Bad
You can't make a modern movie about oil exploration without anti-fossil fuel messaging and this movie goes hard in that direction. You can't make a movie without 30% gay representation, female empowerment, and deconstructing the patriarchy. This movie goes hard in those directions as well. And by "goes hard" I don't mean they're having buttsex under the flickering glow of the flare stack while Heal The World plays in the background. I mean the story contorts itself around virtue signals of equality, diversity, equity, inclusion, climate change, overpopulation, and corruption.

The crew engages in all sorts of nonsensical behavior and a myriad of bullshit plot contrivances propel the story while reinforcing the aforementioned messages. There's an ancient form of life that might destroy 90% of life on earth, but the real threat is oil executives! The whole thing is clunky and poorly executed; it trips over its own dick with Twitter hashtag style messaging. Why? Just tell a good story! Hey, we released an ancient spore from the Permian and everyone's fuxxored if we don't figure out how it functions. Run that as a standalone story without all the preachy bullshit and let everyone decide for themselves if there's a HumansAreBadMmkay conclusion to be drawn. And I guess that's my main complaint about this story. It spoon feeds its audience every step of the way and in the process it disrespects their intelligence.

The Ugly
I can't list all the uglies. There are too many plot conveniences to catalog. Cameras stop working, then they work again for no discernable reason, then stop working when the plot needs some tension.

Plot armor is a real thing. If you're a main character you'll survive almost anything. If you're a red shirt you'll die in the same room and under the same circumstances where everyone else lived.

People exposed to lots of spores get infected by the spores... until they don't. Don't ask why. The plot needs spores to do things and then stop doing those things. Some people infected with spores are immortal; other people infected with spores die easily. Why? Don't know.

Bad guy -actual murderous bastard who intentionally poisoned people- is left to wander around free 15 minutes after confessing to multiple murders. Not only that, the murderer still has full access to systems and controls where he tries to murder again by blowing up the whole fucking platform. Why not lock him up? So tension can happen, apparently. Makes no fukken sense to me.

I'd have to rewatch the series to find every awkward, bullshit, idiotic lump in the pudding and I'm certainly not doing that. Suffice it to say, even though the story was compelling enough to keep me watching, it was not immersive for more than a few minutes at a time because something stupid always pulled me out of the story. The last two episodes I hate-watched just to see how ridiculous this would become. It's fucking ridiculous.

One of the worst moments happens while Token Gay Negro is piloting a remote controlled rover to the bottom of the sea. An otherwise educated woman in a supervisory role says, "Good thing we're not doing this at night." Token Gay Negro says, "It's always night down there." Thefuq? Your audience is so stupid you need to tell them it's dark at the bottom of the ocean and you did it with dialogue instead of...I don't know...showing the rover's camera and then turning on a goddam headlamp? Fuck off, John Strickland.

1.5 stars out of 5

[The Seer]

I was intrigued by the idea of an oil rig movie/show.

[Dr_Phibes]

I was intrigued by the idea of an oil rig movie/show.

[HighPlainsGrifter]

The lack of LGBT representation in your movie recommendations is disturbing to Diego and Screwy.