Movie Review--Underwater

"When you're underwater for months at a time, you lose all sense of day and night."
--Norah Price, Underwater


Scores of sequels and reboots often overshadow original films, but persistently searching for movies that are not part of classic or established franchises can pay off.  It certainly has its issues, but Underwater proves far more atmospheric and original than this month's reboot of The Grudge.  Underwater is a mixture of the excellent and the mediocre, combining superb production values with the kinds of passable characters featured in so many other movies.  Thankfully, many of the lead performances (including Kristin Stewart's) help keep the characters afloat once the unrelenting danger starts within the first few minutes of the movie.  The last act even borderlines on developing themes of cosmic horror, a subgenre of horror that is not often explored in mainstream horror films.


Production Values

From the first scene onward, it is apparent that the sets and CGI are utilized very well, providing a consistent and realistic aesthetic.  The creatures themselves are not only fairly unique, but they are also never cheapened by poor effects.  While a handful of jumpscares are included in the movie, there are not many of them.  A strong atmosphere is given priority over petty jolts even in many scenes where the monsters are featured.  That these underwater beings stand out can draw attention to the fact that the human characters are not particularly special, though, despite the acting remaining solid for the whole runtime.

Kristin Stewart's Norah, the most prominent member of the cast, is somewhat monotone at times, but she does show emotional fluctuations during some scenes.  The idea that Stewart is utterly incapable of realistic acting is false, not that all characters need to display deep emotion to begin with--not all people are prone to vividly communicate their emotions with words or facial expressions, after all!  The other cast members don't offer bad performances, but the focus on Norah comes with the cost of strong characterization for them.


Story

Spoilers!

The Kepler drilling station, an underwater structure in the Mariana Trench, begins to unexpectedly flood, forcing the surviving employees to consider walking along the bottom of the trench in pressurized suits.  An engineer named Norah saves part of the rig, but the circumstances convince her companions to attempt to walk to another station.  As they begin their underwater trek, it becomes clear that an unknown species is present.


Intellectual Content

In the rush to investigate other planets for traces of sentient life, many often forget that the earth's own oceans could easily host creatures that have never before been discovered.  Since anything that does not contradict logic is at least hypothetically possible, it might very well be the case that something resembling an eldritch monster of Lovecraftian lore exists miles below the surface of our oceans (of course, no eldritch being could be outside of or over all of reality, as at least one of Lovecraft's entities is said to be, because the laws of logic cannot be defied by even the greatest conscious being).  Films like Underwater are the rare exception to the entertainment norm of exploring ideas about extraterrestrial life, demonic activity, or mainstream cryptozoology.


Conclusion

The infamous "January curse" of poor film quality does not apply to Underwater, even if the characters are in need of deeper development.  If the surviving or replacement characters were more developed, a sequel to Underwater could potentially establish a cinematic universe featuring cosmic entities comparable to those of Lovecraftian lore.  At the very least, the scale of Underwater's ultimate "antagonist" and the setting of the Mariana Trench genuinely distinguish the movie from many other recent creature horror films.


Content:
 1.  Violence:  A man implodes from intense pressure, and his body parts float around other characters onscreen.
 2.  Profanity:  While "shit" is uttered frequently, one character does use the film's one allotted "fuck."