DEEP TROUBLES

The Chinese Room drills into a rich vein of '70s horror in terrifying firstperson chiller Still Wakes The Deep

- CHRIS SCHILLING

Caz McLeary ran away to sea to escape his problems. As this working-class ex-boxer from Glasgow chats with a colleague in the canteen of the Beira D, an oil rig in the North Sea just off the coast of Scotland, the nature of those problems soon becomes clear. His wife, Suze, is talking about divorce. She’ll come around, his workmate says. Not likely, McLeary responds, “if I get the jail”. His crime? Assaulting a man who insulted her. “Remember,” his friend begins, “life is like football. It’s not over…” McLeary finishes the sentence: “…until the final whistle, aye. But you’re a Barnsley fan, so you’re pretty much fucked from the off.”

Hours later, he’s running to escape a very different kind of problem, the possibility of prison now the least of his worries. The rig, we’re told, as our demonstration skips forward a few chapters, has drilled into “something”. For a good while, you won’t know exactly what that something is, but you’ll begin to see its effects, on both the rig and the crew themselves. At the controls, QA tester