Underwater (Review)
Underwater Takes a Deep Breath and Dives Right into the Action!
When it comes to movies hitting theaters in January, I tend to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. This is especially true when it comes to horror movies. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up enjoying Underwater. Don’t get me wrong, the film is far from perfect and actually pretty dumb when you stop to think about it. Underwater doesn’t give you a chance to “stop and think” though until the credits start to roll. It’s a frantic, fast-paced deep-sea horror flick, and amazingly enough, that works perfectly for it.
Audiences are fascinated with underwater movies. I believe that’s because, like space, it’s a place that man was never supposed to be. Underwater expands on that notion using the setting to tell an unnerving horror tale. Within the first five minutes of the movie, a deep-sea drilling station suffers a catastrophic failure. After the initial disaster destroys much of the facility and many of the crew manages to escape, the remaining six survivors (Kristen Stewart, Jessica Henwick, T.J. Miller, Vincent Cassel, Mamoudo Arthie, and John Gallagher Jr) are faced with the very real possibility that they’re going to die. That is until they decide to make a last-ditch, desperate effort to suit up and cross the bottom of the ocean to another facility that might still offer a chance for survival. Once outside, they discover that they’re not alone and that something is hunting them 7 miles beneath the surface.
Underwater is one hell of a thriller. That’s because it doesn’t have a first act. Most movies use the first 20 minutes or so of a film to establish characters and set up the stakes. Instead, Underwater dives right to the action. We hardly have time to take in what’s going on before walls are exploding and water is flooding the facility it takes place in. Frantically, the stars of the film race to find safety as their world is crushed around them. From there, it barely gives us a chance to catch our breaths before it throws more chaos our way. It feels oddly bombastic at times, but director William Eubank manages to make it work. Sure, the characters are all in a panicked rush, but the movie itself doesn’t feel like it is. Like a shark, it’s constantly moving out of fear that stopping even for a moment might kill it, and it’s probably right about that, especially because there are a lot of “wait what the hell is going on” moments. Not letting us actually stop and think about it helps to sell the horror aspect and keeps us rooted in the moment.
Since the film doesn’t take time to set up the backstories of the characters, it relies heavily on the performances and chemistry of its actors. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’ve talked a lot of #$*& about Kristen Stewart since she appeared in the Twilight films. She might have deserved some of that back then, but ever since last year’s Charlie’s Angels I’ve been seeking out more of her movies and she’s been growing on me. This time around that natural tension that she seems to carry feels perfectly suited for the setting of Underwater. After all, all the characters are constantly moments away from death. In order to offset the fast pace and constant peril, the film splits the comic relief between a few characters, but T.J. Miller is the primary jester. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of his, but I do think he’s very good at what he does. Given the PG-13 rating, he has to tone it down a bit and I believe that this makes him much more bearable. Despite not knowing much about any of the characters, the actors all do a tremendous job of endearing them on the audience to the point that we actually care about their safety.
Of course, a movie like this isn’t going to be “high art.” It’s a mindless thriller about undersea monsters. Really it’s only job is to look cool and be scary, which it does. The setting is ominous as hell, with the characters switching between claustrophobic hallways to murky open water where the visibility is pretty much zero. That gives the film plenty of opportunities to build tension as monsters flicker into sight just long enough to freak us out before disappearing again. The characters’ constant vulnerability is countered with these incredibly cool underwater suits that look like a cross between something an astronaut would wear and mech armor. These suits add in a new element of suspense as well, since they constantly have to battle against time as their air begins to run low. This all leads up to a final sequence that is, all things considered, pretty stupid, but in the moment is awe-inspiring.
Underwater is a film that you just have to shut up and hold on for dear life to enjoy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s got plenty of moments where it falters a bit, most notably the seemingly unnecessary and somewhat bland voiceovers by Stewart. However, it’s still a pretty thrilling adventure. I honestly had much more fun with this flick that I believed I was going to and I’m glad because the trailer looked pretty damn good. It would have been nice to have a little more build-up and have gotten to know the characters a bit more before they were inevitably picked off one by one. When all is said and done, Underwater isn’t a half-bad movie. It’s a shot of adrenaline in a month that’s normally pretty lackadaisical at theaters.
