Within the Rock (1996) — Triskaidekafiles

WITHIN THE ROCK

WRITER: Gary J. Tunnicliffe

DIRECTOR: Gary J. Tunnicliffe

STARRING: Xander Berkeley as Ryan
Caroline Barclay as Dr. Dana Shaw
Bradford Tatum as Cody Harrison
Brian Krause as Luke Harrison
Barbara Patrick as Samantha "Nuke-Em" Rogers
Michael Zelniker as Archer
Duane Whitaker as Potter
Calvin Levels as Banton

QUICK CUT: A group of miners head to an asteroid to stop it before it crashes into the Earth. No not that one.

THE MORGUE

Dr. Dana Shaw - An astrophysicist or something who has figured out the best way to take care of an asteroid/rogue moon about to hit the Earth is to divert it’s path with several timed explosions. She’s smart, takes no shit, and is laser focused on saving the Earth.

Ryan - The head of the mining crew tasked with carrying out Shaw’s plan. He’s a long in the tooth cynic, who has been at this long enough to see how often the little guy gets screwed over by the suits. He is out for himself, and will do whatever he can to make a buck.

Cody and Luke - The Harrison brothers. The main miners of the team, who use the drill and do most of the grunt work. They’re happy to do the work, do their part, but they don’t like to be pushed around.

Banton and Archer - The techs who monitors the systems while the Harrisons operate the drill. They’re in charge of the tunes, and both very capable with computers.

Nuke-Em: The teams demolitions expert, who is there if the drill needs a little help getting through a tougher than expected bit of rock. She is actually putting on a tough front as a bit of armour against the toxic masculinity her field is filled with.

Potter - The teams mechanic and chief engineer. He keeps all the machines in top working order, or as much as he can with how much they’re pushing them to get the work done in time. He’s worked with Ryan for some time, they came up through the ranks, and while Ryan can be a bit rough around the edges, the pair of them seem to have a genuine friendship, or at least a long term grudging respect.

Can you smell what the Rock is within-ing??

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! This week's subject is a late 90s "Alien" rip off, oh so timely, called Within the Rock. No long preamble this month, so let's just dive right in.

The movie begins two million years ago, on the planet Trillium, but none of that is important, because this will never come up again. At least, not the specifics.

All this is for is to set up where the main plot device and monster comes from, as we watch these aliens seal away the main baddie in it's cage, and launch it into space.

This almost feels like something that was added after the fact to flesh out the story, or explain things for confused viewers.

Not sure how I feel about the new look for Cyclops in Avengers Doomsday.

As the giant space cube is flung into space, we cut to Earth, in 2019...and can I just pause for a moment to absorb the fact that, when this movie came out in 1996, that year was legit 20 whole years in the future?

We watch Dr. Dana Shaw meet with several government officials following a briefing about her plan to deal with an impending asteroid/rogue moon on a collision course with Earth, by sending miners to drill and divert the asteroid.

Huh, that's one plan to avert...Armageddon.

This also sets up a dramatic subplot of the military poised to swoop in should Dana and her miners fail, but aside from providing some motivation for characters later on, this doesn't really go anywhere.

We then cut to nine weeks later on the rogue moon, Galileo's Child, with the mining operation well underway, and Doctor Dana arriving.

She meets with the head of the crew, Ryan, played by the goto guy when you need an authoritative jerk, Xander Berkeley. The crews are running slightly behind schedule, and she reminds him the fate of the world, not his bank account, is at stake.

I don't have to put up with this, I'm up for a promotion to head of the CTU!

We take some time watching some of the drilling and equipment being explained, and we also get to meet the crew. They're your average blue collar group just trying to pay the bills by doing an honest day's work. Even if it is in space.

Sorry if it feels like I’m skimming over a lot of the finer details, I know my readers don’t wanna miss a thing.

To make up the lost time, Ryan orders longer shifts, against Doctor Dana's wishes, and he blames her for it. Oh good, sexism survives into the future past.

Beta team gets to work, and busily drills away, until they encounter a particularly difficult patch of terrain to drill through. Ryan has "Nuke-em" their demolitions expert head out there and make things go boom and keep things on schedule.

Once she does that, they discover a strange chamber, filled with bones, strange writing, and a fossilized creature. Ryan recognises the metal cube as a giant block of platinum, and he demands the crew get to work taking what they can, because they just found their bonuses. Future of Earth be damned. Dana agrees to taking an hour to keep morale up, as well as it will help clear the platinum out of the way, ultimately.

The team celebrates their find over dinner, and the atmosphere generators around the area is shut down, to give it a chance to cool off. Meanwhile, all this activity is causing the fossilized creature to regenerate, so we can get this plot moving.

So the teams get back to work drilling the next day, unawares of the creature lurking in the very tunnels they're digging. The atmosphere generator has finally had enough though, and gives up. Surprised they didn’t have it be deliberate sabotage.

The team has to switch to full atmospheric suits to continue the work, and get back at it. Potter and Banton work to get the generator back functioning, and in the process, Banton discovers Potter with his face torn off, killed off camera by the monster. But we do get to see it kill Banton next.

No one has noticed the missing crew members yet, everyone assuming they're still working on getting the atmosphere back. So, drilling continues, until Luke screams.

The creature has Luke, and decides to just...hold him, until other people can get suited up, out the airlock, and attack it with whatever they can grab.

Ryan shoots it a few times, and Luke gets free. They kick at the supposedly dead creature, but it's never that easy, and the creature is Not Really Dead.

A few more shots get fired, and Ryan gets hit by a ricochet. He's assumed dead, and the rest of the crew gets back in the drilling platform safely.

Welcome to the first annual meeting of the John McClane fan club.

Doctor Dana patches up Cody's wounds, and they talk out what just happened. Dana does the math and figures out that, somehow, the fossilized creature has returned.

They try and figure out what to do, and Nuke-em has a few suggestions. Yes, it involves explosives. I like her, she's 'splodey. She even mentions a little concoction of her own, I bet she calls it Nitro-9.

While trying to figure out how to protect themselves from the creature, and corral it where they need to, Doctor Dana realises that they have fire extinguishers, and it won't like those. Good way to be non lethal too, so the movie can drag on...

Archer notices some of the photos and notes that Dana took of the chamber, and recognises that the writings are similar to binary. They hastily decode them, and he gives an exposition dump about the opening scene.

The brothers and Nuke-em head out to try and take on the creature. They get chased a bit, but Nuke-em does get to eventually use her new toy. Unfortunately, when she goes to check things out, the creature is still Not Really Dead.

And Nuke-em is far less resilient than the creature, and no match for the creature. The brothers try and save her, but to no avail. Luke distracts the creature, and ends up dying while his brother is dragged back into the drilling platform. Oh well, he's with the angels now.

Following that staggering loss, the survivors plan what to do next. The miners are all set to leave, but Doctor Dana explains they can't, not until the job is done, or else Earth is doomed.

Luke and Archer head outside to continue drilling, and Dana works on the math, to see how much more work needs to be done, what sort of explosions need to be placed, and when to blow, to hopefully pull this off with what they have left.

They notice the rover is missing, put a few pieces together, with the help of noticing the platinum is all gone, and figure out that Ryan is not dead and trying to get away with their spoils.

Luke spies the rover, and no sign of Ryan, so they AGAIN assume he's dead. Giving karma the benefit of the doubt on that guy. Cody gets the rover running, and after another brief tussle with the creature, he and Archer beat feet back to the platform.

Y'know, Cody has now had, what? Three encounters with the creature, and has managed to survive each one. Dude has the luck of several rabbits feet.

Anyways, they've drilled enough to do what they need to do, as long as they detonate within two hours. They still have the creature to deal with, so decide to bait it to the front of the drill, hit it with the coolant jets, and finish it off that way. Mommy, how come daddy didn’t do that twenty minutes ago??

To cut to the chase, they get everything set up, the creature chases them to the drill head, and they work to get the monster into position. This sure would be a terrible time for any sort of complication to turn up...oh hey, Ryan!

After a bit of a fight with their former boss, Ryan gets shoved towards the creature, and killed, and oh hey! It got the monster in perfect position, so let's wrap this thing up!

The surviving trio make it to the rover, make it to the surface, get on the escape vessel, fly away, and detonate the charges at the right time, diverting the asteroid, and saving the Earth. I know they were pressed for time, but it's a shame they couldn't take home any of the remains...

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks fine, for a very early era DVD.

Audio: Sounds good to me.

Body Count: A high percentage of death for a small cast.

1 - 46 minutes in and the alien kills Potter off camera
2 - Then gets Banton as well.
3 - Nukem gets drilled in the head
4 - Luke gets pickaxed
5 - The creature kills Xander
6 - The creature itself goes boom

Best Corpse: Ryan for sheer deserving of his death, but the most notable one is probably Potter’s. It’s a good shock, and the bare, bloody skull is an attention grabbing image.

Blood Type - C+: It’s not bad, but there was some decent blood, the aforementioned skull, and the creature theoretically looks good, when we can see it. Some good effects when it reconstitutes itself.

Drink Up! every time someone sneaks up and surprises someone else.

Movie Review: Straight up, I made a fair amount of jokes about this movie's similarity to "Armageddon" and I want to be clear; this movie came out first, by like...several years. The only reason I didn't get more into the shocking similarities, is because I haven't seen the more popular movie in over two freakin' decades. It's so weird when this happens. I only literally just discovered not 15 minutes ago this was a tv movie, and I think that explains a bit of the slower pace, and obviously lower budget. I was already regarding it well enough, but knowing that, it’s just a pinch better. This had a slow start, and takes awhile before the fun begins, but by the final act, the characters had grown on me. They made sure the stakes were high, and I was kinda invested. And hey, always fun to see Xander in a movie. The big problem is that this movie feels like it missed the boat. If this had come out in the 80s, or closer to when "Alien" mattered, this might be pretty well regarded. Instead, it feels like it missed the boat by 10 years. In fact, it’s lower budget, style of filmmaking, would have fit in perfectly in the 80s. By the end of the 90s, it feels almost out of place. Three out of five platinum cubes.

Entertainment Value: The characters come off as a little basic, but they’re unique enough, and the chemistry between the characters keeps that first half of the movie interesting, while you wait for the monster to show up. That helps the stakes of the final act. There’s enough going on, and Xander’s character is sleazy and slimy, and annoying, in all the best ways. The creature could have been a highlight, but either because half the movie is brown, or they weren’t confident in the final look of the creature, they keep it hidden more than they show. There’s never really any good shot of it. The creature in Split Second gets a better look, but only just. The Jaws treatment doesn’t quite work here, since half the selling point of the movie is this monstrous, killing machine, and it has very little presence. Still, the kills are fun, the cast is fun, and it may be slow at times, but it drew me in by that final act. Not a great flick, but definitely one of those “Oh this looks fun!” kinda rental movies you’d watch with friends on a Saturday night. Three out of five meatloafs.