This...is one of the all-time worst monster films EVER. It not only employs every bad cliche from every other BAD monster film before, but it even does those poorly. I rented it last night hoping for something approaching DEEP RISING in entertainment. What I got was a 100 minute espionage film with about 5 minutes of octopus footage (and some of that repeated over and over). The characters and story needed a lot more work to be interesting, let alone believable. Now before people out there shout "What's so believable about a giant octopus?", the point is that any film like this has got to make the audience believe in at least the possibility of the events, and OCTOPUS doesn't. The film is almost a third over before even the idea of a giant octopus is introduced. With the most minimal of rewrites all the octopus footage could be removed and the story could still continue as before (Agent captures villain, sub crashes, escape in minisub, climax with terrorists on cruise ship). This isn't to say that 'more special effects equals good monster movie', because that would make DEEP BLUE SEA better than JAWS. But it does seem obvious that no-one on the production staff understood anything that makes a monster film effective. There are people who say "It's just entertainment, don't think about it." Well, it's obvious the producers didn't bother thinking when they made this, or only made this for people who didn't.
