The Deep House is a 2021 French supernatural horror film written and directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo. One night, I saw the aquatic cover deep within Hulu’s horror section and decided to give it a shot. The water always freaked me out because you don’t know what lies beneath. My brain always jumps to Lovecraftian monsters, so when I saw a haunted-looking house on the cover beneath two descending divers, I knew I had to take this plunge.
A Unique Premise: Influencers Dive into a Submerged Haunted House
To my pleasant surprise, conceptually, it was really cool. The plot centers around a social media influencer called Ben (James Jagger) and his girlfriend Tina (Camille Rowe) in their travels seeking fresh content to serve up to their loyal audience. The couple is traveling from New York to France specifically looking for a submerged asylum which upon their discovery turns out to be the site of a populated recreational area and thus is not very cool for the influencers. They cross paths with a grizzly-looking local man named Pierre (Eric Savin), who informs them of a completely intact, submerged house far away from those pesky, uncool families. Our beloved couple, hungry for views, cannot resist the allure of such a perfectly magnificent adventure, despite the many obvious red flags.
The Deep House has elements of a found-footage style film, except here the audience is given many extra angles thanks to an underwater drone that follows the main characters around on their damp adventures. Found footage films, to me, give off a very claustrophobic vibe, which holds true for the duration of this movie. This complements the idea that they’re underwater in cramped scuba suits with only a given amount of oxygen, all before actually encountering the ghouls. They build this atmosphere well throughout its entirety.
Atmospheric Thrills and Chilling Isolation
So as the movie progresses, it’s a scary and atmospheric romp around this house and everything is going well, and it’s pretty frightening. The ambiance is there, the feeling of isolation is there, the feeling of impending suffocation is there; they’re ticking most of my fright boxes. And then, just as my enjoyment of this movie begins to solidify, we’re presented with the ghouls. Without going into specifics, they floated around the screen like a chunk of lava in a lava lamp or like a candy bar in a swimming pool waiting to be fished out with one of those blue nets on a stick. They did not scare me in the slightest, which is my only real gripe with this movie.
So, the last third of the movie involves a lot of ghoul cat and mouse games, which were hard for me to swallow because I couldn’t get over how nonthreatening they were. I shouldn’t feel like I’d easily be able to overcome some supernatural-type entity. That idea distracted me for the remaining portion of the film, and honestly the interesting concepts driving the plot forward became lame to me, because these ghouls seemed like such weaklings. However, the film’s ending redeemed itself for its transgressions against universally accepted horror movie ghoul guidelines and standards.
Fresh Take on Supernatural Horror with Social Commentary
The Deep House does do a lot right though, and it is an entertaining movie. The underwater sets and acting brought a fresh feel to the supernatural horror genre. The social commentary they deliver regarding content creators is always a relatable topic. They did a good job showing how eager content creators can become so fixated on their work that they fail to realize what may be going on around them, leading to otherwise avoidable trouble.
Ultimately, after all is said and done, and the credits begin to roll, I’m left with an inclination not to dive into a foreign lake containing a perfectly intact submerged old house. However, if I were to do the opposite and indeed dive into said ghost house lake, I would probably not fret and gently push the ghouls aside with ease and continue on with my scuba business.
You can watch The Deep House on Paramount+