1/11/2020 - Underwater (2020) - 4/10

Aliens meets The Abyss, which is a fine premise and pretty decent set-up for some easy tension and scares. Throw in a strong actress like Kristin Stewart and some solid production design, and you are well on your way to a winner. Unfortunately, beyond its concept, there isn’t much keeping this one afloat. The dread of the deep just felt too muted, the contrivances kept building, and the character of it all just too flat. 

Its a solidly looking sci-fi creeper (except for the “water lens flares”), with plenty of the budget and effort going into the fabrication of this underwater base, the suits, and the camera motions. There are only a handful of characters with the ocean mystery itself being your biggest; the blackness of the murky depths for your imagination to fill. It loved playing up the Alien-ness of it; turning to face the creature in the helmet, running around in their underwear, alien baby...but there was a connection and a communication of the people, the places and the things that clicked for that film. This one...not so sure. If you don’t give us a reason to care, the ocean will be as empty and lifeless as your screenplay. 

It tries to have its cake of jumping en media res without characters but also wants to demonstrate traits & reasoning without context. I appreciate the people dealing with the situation they are thrust into, but these half ass flourishes of purported motivation/person-hood that don’t really make sense are lame. There is a hint of things like dreaminess, space madness, and claustrophobia, but they come off as  script outlined bullet points that they never actually wrote for. Especially when we have to shove in a tied up love & loss & love story, without knowing or caring about any of them. And the stretching of believability in the science, the suits, and the station 

The terror of the dark end of the depths was effective, but it wasn’t quite enough. Perhaps it was the editing, perhaps the lack of character, it just didn’t have the devastation of the scares that I hoped for. The creatures were interesting with a nice design and a perfect murky masking, but the deaths struggle to get beyond “cool” and the scares barely bubbled up. I think that for some theater goers, like the high school couple who told the usher how “scary” it was, it works well enough, but it just sank for me as it went down, down, down.

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Blub

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Spoilers below…

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Blub

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*It does get points for the final reveal. The “old one” Cthonic kaiju was awesome. I don’t know how much sense it makes, as he is destroying things but not really destroying things. I mean, if he is coming up from the drill sight, why does the drill seem to be standing, working, and easily sustains his blows? Also, I have to bring up the final end. The blow-em-up was so so so convenient. The the drill destruction being so easy, having a countdown, providing blast radius and being able to identify the creatures when they haven’t before. The isn’t a self-destruct sequence, yet it is played as such. Didn’t we need it explained? How dumb.