Underwater – The Review

Underwater, 20th Century Fox
Rated PG-13, 95 Minutes
Written by: Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad
Directed by: William Eubank
Starring: Kristen Stewart, TJ Miller, Jessica Henwick, Vincent Cassel, John Gallagher Jr, and Mamoudou Athie

Underwater, as the name so generically suggests, takes place under water. Deep underwater. Six miles under water.

From the trailer, I knew I would have to see this film, not because I expected a great bit of cinema, but because I am a sucker for monster movies, and isolated disaster movies, and Underwater has both. But, because I didn’t want to be jaded when I saw it, I tried to avoid any advanced reviews, to keep my palate clean, if you will.

Try as I might, however, I couldn’t avoid seeing opinions about this movie. The word Alien kept popping up, and I began to subconsciously prepare myself for another Life. (LINK THIS TO OUR LIFE REVIEW)

Imagine, then, my surprise when the film finally started after the requisite 30 previews and 2 commercials, and I found myself immediately beginning to question some of the design choices of a six-mile deep drilling rig instead of the (admittedly, and known going in) ridiculous plot.

Full disclosure: I do not design deep sea diving/drilling platforms designed for long-term human habitation…

HOWEVER, if I did, I certainly wouldn’t build the bathrooms with ceramic tile, especially when you know entire structure would be prone to torquing and periodic malformation which would crack those walls constantly. And let’s not even address the need to access the various fluid and electrical systems behind those walls for maintenance purposes.

But that’s me. Maybe I’m wrong.

And, on a serious note: would we actually use concrete fabrication at that depth? Great compressive strength, sure, but not so great when it flexes (see above question). But it does look great in the requisite “crawl through the damaged sections to safety(?)” sequences. Any Engineers out there, please let me know.

Regardless, poor design choices aside, the film opens with Kristen Stewart voice-overing the dangers of prolonged time underwater, out of the light, when you lose sense of time, and dreams can seem as real as reality because the brain can only handle so much…

So the entire opening disaster sequence, prior to any introduction of crew members (except Stewart, brushing her teeth and saving a Daddy Long-Legs spider in the bathroom and voice-overing), is set up to be a 4-5 minute dream sequence illustrating the fragility of the human mind.

But–SPOILER ALERT–it’s not. WTF, man? You can’t just talk about something like that, something that gives a great insight into humanity’s deepest, darkest fears, and then toss it aside like Luke’s lightsaber.

Sorry for that tangent. Moving on.

As our six survivors slowly make their way through disaster scenario after disaster scenario, losing one after another of their not-quite-merry band encounters what first brings the Alien comparison: the small, vaguely Alien-fetus-shaped, creature feeding on a body ripped from an escape pod during the initial disaster which is collapsing the rig level-by-level throughout the movie.

No chest-bursting, though, so there’s that.

Oh, and they “kill” it, bring it on board, give us our requisite jump scares about how maybe it’s not dead, actually tease to the audience that it might not actually be dead (without the crew seeing), then… discard the idea in favor of more falling and jumping underwater to the next plotpoint.

I could go on, but let me just sum up the rest of the film this way:

• People die (SPOILER ALERT: including TJ Miller).
• People admit they love one another.
• Places they weren’t going to go to for partial safety because there’s “nothing there” is wrong (things are there).
• Another plot-point about the mental stability of people under pressure is introduced and discarded (the Captain).
• The survivors are unexpected.
• The hero is not.
• I lied about there not being a chest-bursting scene, it’s just not what you’re thinking, and one clever bit of reverse-homage.
• Cthulu lives.

So while Alien, with it’s “being stalked by a monster through an extreme environments” is one possible comparison, I was more of the mind of such films as Leviathan, The Abyss, Pandorum, etc., than the lazy Alien choice.

But, overall, it’s a fun movie to watch, as evidenced by the 3 screaming teenage girls sitting next to me in the theater.

Even if it’s about as generic as the name would suggest.

My Rating: 5/10

It is exactly what it is.