After an involving and genuinely chilling setup, this adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel gradually loses steam, becoming flat and unconvincing. Surprisingly, some of this is due to a passionless performance from lead Dustin Hoffman, who is never really believable as a genius psychologist; he seems more like a retired Sears sales manager than one of the foremost academic minds of his generation. Part of this is also the problem of the screenplay, which takes far too long to get its characters in the know regarding the truth about a mysterious spacecraft and its effect on them; a group of people allegedly this intelligent would have puzzled it out more quickly. A giant squid attack (no kidding) isn't handled particularly well, but then again, maybe there is no good way to visually create a giant squid attack that isn't hilarious. Minor supporting characters such as the one played by Queen Latifah may as well wear the red security shirts of the original Star Trek TV series, so obviously expendable are they, while the film's protagonists spend most of their time dodging undersea critters instead of exploring a mysterious alien spacecraft. Sphere (1998) pales in comparison to a film to which it bears marked similarities, James Cameron's The Abyss (1989), a film that received mix reactions upon its release but looks more and more in subsequent years like a genre classic.