A crew of aquatic researchers work to get to safety after an earthquake devastates their subterranean laboratory. But the crew has more than the ocean seabed to fear.
The first mistake director William Eubank makes in “Underwater” is starting the action almost immediately. Unlike the far-superior “Alien” and its breathtaking sequel, “Aliens,” both of which are obviously big influences here, Eubank decides to forego any necessary character development in favor of instantaneous action. Within the first five minutes, there is a big explosion and the film is set in motion.
Kristen Stewart plays Nora, a mechanical engineer who works on a deep-sea oil rig at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, six and a half miles beneath the surface. When an earthquake causes the rig to become unstable, Nora and a small band of survivors, led by their captain, Lucien (Vincent Cassel), must work together to try and make it to the surface. With all the rescue pods in the rig damaged in the quake, they have no choice but to suit up and walk across the ocean floor to an outpost, several miles away, where they plan on utilizing rescue pods there. But as they begin their trek, they quickly realize that something is hunting them, one by one, and if the creatures don’t get them, their depleting oxygen will!
“Underwater” took me back to the summer of 1989 when three movies, “The Abyss,” “Leviathan,” and “Deep Star Six,” all took place at the bottom of the ocean and each film dealt with either aliens or deep-sea monsters. My personal favorite was Sean S. Cunningham’s “Deep Star Six,” the lowest-budgeted movie of the three but the most enjoyable. I feel like “Underwater” was heavily inspired by all three films as well as the aforementioned “Alien” and “Aliens” and while these movies were enjoyable and never took themselves too seriously, maybe with the exception of James Cameron’s “The Abyss,” here, director William Eubank starts out with an intriguing premise but by the end, never goes beneath the surface (pun intended), everything is all one-dimensional, the acting, the script, the direction, the action, and while there are a few genuinely well-shot sequences, for the most part, everything succumbs to mediocrity.
Kristen Stewart has the personality of a wet mop, and no matter what she appears in, she always looks constipated. In the “Twilight” movies, she never smiled, or so I believe, a friend told me that (cough cough) and here, the same rings through. Thankfully, she manages to blend in enough with the rest of the ensemble cast that the film doesn’t suffer as a result, but just barely. Neither Ms. Stewart nor the rest of the cast is given much of anything to do except look terrified and then look dead. As I mentioned earlier, the film never introduces the cast early on, or even in flashback so that we can get to know a little about each of their characters before everything goes south and that is its major downfall, we have a bunch of characters running around onscreen and we basically don’t care about them. Even when you cast good actors, with no exposition or character development, the audience has nothing to relate to and no matter what dire circumstances you place them in, in the end, nobody is going to care. And that defeats the whole purpose of putting them in danger in the first place.
However, having said all of that, “Underwater” is a good-looking film. The set-pieces are superb and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli (“Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” “The Lone Ranger,” “6 Underground”), delivers exciting, top-notch visuals while Legacy Effects (“The Shape of Water,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”) deliver a terrifying creature that would give the Xenomorphs in the Alien movies a run for their money. Had Mr. Eubank given his characters more depth, and not just to the bottom of the sea, “Underwater” could have gone on to become a cult classic. As it stands, it will probably find a small audience but like the recent remake of “The Grudge,” will more than likely slip away into obscurity.
Available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital April 14th
