James Cameron: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best

7. The Abyss

Battle Angel Alita
20th Century Fox

For our next entry, we have one of Cameron's lesser known works, The Abyss. If you haven't heard of this film, there's a reason for that. While not a bad movie by any stretch, it's just not as memorable to most people as his other works.

This film - centering around a Navy Seal team sent to recover a nuclear submarine which then becomes way more complicated a situation than it already was - has all the hallmarks of a James Cameron film that we've come to expect. The characters never feel truly safe, every action scene feels like the heroes can die at any moment. And of course there's the classic Cameron scenario of normal situations getting interrupted and made worse by supernatural antics.

While there isn't a lot to set it apart from the other films on this list, it does have one thing going for it. It takes place mostly in the ocean, and James Cameron absolutely LOVES the ocean, and thus knows how to make it look big, vast, beautiful, but also incredibly dangerous. It's legit hard to tell if you should be more scared of the aliens or the ocean this all takes place in.

Contributor
Contributor

John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?