Underwater

Underwater has all the trademarks of a film that was completed and then everyone sat around wondering "What now? Who did we market this to? How do we market this? Does anyone have any idea what's happening in it?" Released in the post award ceremony dumping ground that is late winter it's a film that will have you leaving the cinema with more questions than you had when you went in.

Deep, deep underwater Kepler 822 Station is a drilling platform perched over the Mariana trench in the Pacific ocean. It's owners Tian Industries are on the search for previously undiscovered resources and they get a lot more than they bargained for when their main drill is destroyed and the living quarters of the platform implode under the atmospheric pressures bearing down on it. Among the survivors are engineers Norah (Kristen Stewart) & Paul (T.J. Miller), biologist Emily (Jessica Henwick) and their captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel) who gave up a chance at evacuation to ensure his crew wasn't left alone. Their only way home is to go deep into the trench where additional rescue pods lay but in the depths strange things are lurking.

Director William Eubank drops us in at the deep end as soon as the opening credits finish in an attempt to disorientate us as much as the crew of the Kepler 822. We get introduced to a brace of characters with little or no defining characteristics and watch them struggle to survive. You sit there thinking "Hmm, I'm sure we'll find something about about these folks soon" but it never happens. Groundwork is laid for a couple of them that goes literally nowhere, others are killed off before we get a chance to know anything about them and the rest are....well one has a teddy bear and one is a woman....and the other has nothing going for him at all. When you don't give a shit about anyone on screen a film never has a chance. Horror and comedy films live or die depending on audience empathy for the characters and there's nothing here. Nothing.

At barely 90 minutes long it feels like a film that has had everything non essential to the plot snipped out. Character building and proper introduction? Gone. Room to breathe and understand the story? So long. A single answer to what's going on? Ya right, good luck. There could have been something here but we'll never know. Lead Kristen Stewart is too good to be wasted like this and it makes for frustrating viewing. This was filmed back in 2017 and was in fact the last film made by 20th century fox before Disney devoured the corporation and so has the smell of a film re-edited and thrown out in an attempt to recoup a bit of cash. 

A barebones and plot hole riddled story aside it's full of the same hoary old tropes horror films have been throwing at us forever. People heading off by themselves, don't go down there, LOUD NOISES, all the old trash that should have died years ago. Even the black dude gets killed first. He appears onscreen and you just know he's a goner. In fairness his death is one of the only effective moments but...like.....c'mon, it's 2020, stop killing off the token minorities for shock value. Anyway, shocks only work if we at least know a character's name. Norah and Lucien are the only people onscreen with any bit of depth (depth, hehe, get it?? *tumbleweed*). Both get a hinted at backstory and Lucien's especially seems to be building to something that annoyingly never comes. Like Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel is too talented for shite like this. Hopefully both of them are using this payday to finance something more interesting than this. Referenced intimacy between other less characters never comes to anything and T.J. Miller as a very odd engineer exists to annoy us so much want him dead as soon as possible. At least that part satisfies when it comes. Yeah yeah spoilers.

Imagine The Abyss crossed with The Meg and with a splash of H.P. Lovecraft creepiness mixed in. You're imagining it right? Now subtract all the fun and wonder from it and don't forget to remove anything that gives you a clue as to what's going on. There you have it. Underwater. An absolutely pointless movie.

In cinemas now. Don't bother.