Underwater Movie Review
Nathan Swank
May 7th, 2020
Awake and showering before the rest of her fellow crew members, Nora (Kristen Stewart) looks in the mirror with an appearance of mental exhaustion and melancholy. There is a deep booming. Something isn’t right. Nora is in a large underwater facility that is the current home and work space for oceanic researchers working for a deep sea drilling company. With pressure building and water beginning to leak, Nora runs, banging on doors to wake people up, but everything is crashing in with oceanic water breaking its way into their lives. To save her own life and whoever remains in the rest of the vessel, Nora must close the cutoff before many lives can make it out. How many lives will be lost? Why did their deep sea facility collapse? What could have caused this? Was it an earthquake or something far worse?
UNDERWATER is an action adventure horror film located in the bottom of the ocean. It’s sometimes silly, a bit predictable, and perhaps even forgettable. But much like the thrilling opening, it also has some terrifically fun sequences.
The handful of initial survivors have to make their way through the massive underwater laboratory in creative ways, even venturing outside into the deep, geared up to walk across the ocean floor. The disaster underwater setup might be a familiar formula but it is filled with tension and fun. Vincent Cassel, John Gallagher Jr., Jessica Henwick, Mamaudou Athie and T.J. Miller for some comic relief, round out the supporting cast. But this is a Kristen Stewart vehicle. To be fair, I’ve never been a big fan of Kristen Stewart, and I’m not simply referring to her TWILIGHT days. It’s not that I think she’s bad, it’s just that even in her independent movie roles, I find her no more than adequate. But I found Stewart to be a very credible strong, charismatic lead for this sort of adventure horror film. Anything I didn’t like about the movie, was definitely not because of her.
Directed by William Eubank (THE SIGNAL) with a screenplay from Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad, UNDERWATER offers horror tropes that could probably be described as either classic or typical depending on your taste. But understand, you’ve seen it before. There’s a specifically odd montage of Stewart’s character stressing and planning her next move. Clearly they did not have a proper transition planned to move the story from point a to point b. One major problem is the unknown creature itself is a bit bland. It should have been given more detailed attention and original thought to its look and deadliness to make it more terrifying and mysterious.
In 1989, three underwater alien action films were made. LEVIATHAN, the slightly better DEEPSTAR SIX, and James Cameron’s far superior THE ABYSS. Now the first two were sort of a subgenre of B-horror film monster movies. Or at least they feel that way to today’s standard. They were all trying to emulate and capitalize off of 1979’s game-changing space horror ALIEN and its 1986 sequel, ALIENS, which was also directed by James Cameron. I bring up these three movies because, outside of shark movies, this underwater genre has been fairly light in quantity. So in a way, it’s nice to have UNDERWATER. It’s not a great film, but it is adequate for the genre. It’s a film where you could easily throw in a tag, “the scariest deep sea alien movie in decades.” That’s not a lie, it’s just that there is no competition. I’m sure someone will remind me of some obscure or perhaps not even that obscure mediocre movie of which I am not thinking that could possibly be scarier. But does it really matter? If you like this sort of genre, throw in some popcorn and have some mindless fun. You could definitely do worse.
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