646f9e108c Marine biologist Skylar Shane hires an expat charter boat captain, Jack Bowman, to help her find prehistoric life form samples in the north Sumatran Sea. During the expedition, they run into some of Jack's 'friends', a gang of smugglers headquartered on a fishing platform in the middle of the sea. Tamal, an orphan sold into servitude on the fishing platform by his uncle, a 'Dukun' (sorcerer and master of black magic) shaman, begs Skylar to take him away. She empathizes with the boy, who reminds her of her lost daughter, Rebecca, and is determined to help him, not knowing what lurks beneath the dark inky water, waiting to surface. Ever since Tamal arrived, mysterious things begin to happen, until one by one the smugglers will be killed by the terrifying creature from the deep. In the middle of an eerie, violent storm, the animus inside Tamal grows stronger, calling for the ancient creature of his nightmares. Now Skylar and Jack must battle the terror - once locked deep in the abyss by an old civilization, as it is now about to resurface.
I don't know why I keep doing this to myself. I get drawn in by these big bug or weird monster movies thinking that each one I see might be an improvement on the last, yet I'm let down each and every time.<br/><br/>Whereas movies like, Deep Star Six or Leviathan did so well, Amphibious is a very disjointed, poorly acted, poorly scripted and poorly funded piece of trash that had no business being put to celluloid. Parts of this didn't even make any sense. It starts as though it's some kind of found footage where 2 holiday makers are killed by an unseen creature and we learn that it's a YouTube video being being watched by a marine biologist called Skylar, who's doing research in Indonesia.<br/><br/>Most of the action takes place on a large ramshackle fishing platform somewhere off the coast of Indonesia and there is some kind of child forced labour situation going on as most of the work is being done by a handful of male teens, who get beaten and threatened regularly. One of the children, Tamal, who turns out to be a young girl, seems to have been sold as a slave there deliberately as people have been disappearing since she arrived.<br/><br/>Skylar arrives at the fishing platform by way of a small chartered boat and the captain and the fishing platform slave owner have unfinished business over a large sum of money. Meanwhile Tamal pleads with Skylar to take her away from there. Skylar tells Tamal's story to the local police, who of course are corrupt and pretend that kids will say anything to get what they want.<br/><br/>At some stage, Tamal cuts herself open and bleeds into the water. This summons some kind of deep sea creature who rises out of the water and as Tamal just lays there crying, the creature lays it's tail across her.<br/><br/>One by one, people are being attacked and pulled off the platform or being bitten in half and eventually the creature rises out of the water completely and makes its way onto the platform and we see that it is some kind of prehistoric marine scorpion. The creature is repeatedly attacked with axes, fire and pikes, but it's Tamal who finishes it off by putting a knife into it's brain. By the end only Tamal and Skylar are left alive.<br/><br/>Back on land, Skylar tries to track down Tamal as she found Tamal's necklace and wanted to hand it back. Tamal is holed up in a shack and when Skylar calls her, she turns and reveals the wound she cut into herself earlier and a baby version of the scorpion emerges from that wound. The baby creatures runs up to Skylar and she crushes it with her boot and then runs off as Tamal starts screaming. The movie ends with more scorpion babies running around the room and out through the door.<br/><br/>Amphibious makes very little sense and for a movie where nearly everyone dies, this is incredibly boring. I guess when the monster connected with Tamal back at the platform, it laid eggs in her but the purpose is never fully revealed. It is alluded that there is some kind of mysticism going on as an old man talking about power and magic at the start and gave Tamal the necklace in the first place, is the one hiding her in the shack at the end. So for some reason these creatures need a human host to reproduce but again, why? <br/><br/>To be honest, unless this movie is aired on some late night TV creature feature program there is really no need to sit through this at all. It's a rambling, plodding movie that never really kicks into gear and despite the exotic location, it's all in vain as 90 percent of the film is shot in and around the fishing platform. 86 minutes of pure tedium is the price I paid for this steaming pile.
I watched this movie in lack of having better to watch. And my interest was heightened when I saw that Brian Yuzna was behind this movie.<br/><br/>And now that I have seen it, I sit here with somewhat of a feeling of having just sat through a late 80's - early 90's horror movie. It didn't seem like it was from 2010 at all. The storyline was pretty much what you've seen in movies back then.<br/><br/>The story is pretty vague. Some researcher is doing work in the ocean somewhere in Asia, and she comes upon some awakened monster that preys upon a local fishing platform. There is some sub-plots about Tamal, about children being held against their will as work slaves and such, but there never really was a greater red line throughout the movie. And you are left wondering, where did this monster come from, how could it have survived for that long, and most importantly of all, just a big why, why, why at most things in the movie.<br/><br/>"Amphibious" was dragged down by a tedious storyline that would have worked better back in the 80's or 90's, but even more so was weighed down by horrible dialogue and pretty bad acting. Sure there were moments of clarity, but in overall, the acting done by the native Indonesians cast for the movie was less than halfhearted. And also one thing comes to mind, why would they be speaking English and not Bahasa Indonesia at a remote location like that? It just didn't make sense.<br/><br/>Now, one of the two things the movie did have working in its favor, was that it worked well at building up suspense. Brian Yuzna is great at doing that, and managed to pull it off in "Amphibious" nicely enough. And the second part that worked well for the movie was the creature itself. Sure, you have to look past the fact that it is a gargantuan scorpion that lives under the water. But once you get past that stupid flaw, then the creature was actually nicely made, and it looked real enough. So hats off for the special effects team on "Amphibious".<br/><br/>I enjoy horror movies, and "Amphibious" was, sadly enough, below average. And I doubt that it is a movie that I will ever be sitting down with for a second watching. The movie is good enough for a single watching, then it is bagged, tagged and forgotten.