On this week’s edition of movies I’m glad I waited this long to watch is Underwater. I don’t think I’ve seen a film that tried so hard that it ended up doing nothing. In hindsight, I’m not sure what I was expecting from William Eubank, the guy who directed Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, and Brian Duffield, the guy who wrote The Babysitter and wrote/directed No One Will Save You. Underwater had all of the fixings to be a Brendan movie. It’s deep sea horror, Lovecraftian creatures, Kristen Stewart, and Vincent Cassel. The final product is an arduous 95-minute more-people-should-have-died-fest. Even Stewart and Cassel couldn’t save this sinking ship. Literally.

A group of researchers are aboard the Kepler 822 when disaster strikes. Supposedly, an earthquake hits the Kepler, causing extreme depressurization and stranding the surviving researchers near the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Norah Price (Kristen Stewart) finds herself as the decision maker and whisks a few crew members to safety. Unfortunately for all of us, one of the crew members is Paul (T.J. Miller). Norah and Captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel) must find a way to get the rest of their crew to one of the few remaining escape pods, lest they find themselves resting in Davey Jone’s locker for eternity. Soon the tables turn when the Kepler crew realizes a potential earthquake is the very least of their problems.

Let’s get the three positives out of the way. Firstly, K-stew and Daddy Cassel. I’m young enough to have been in middle school when the Twilight Kristen Stewart craze was heavy. As a “cool” kid, I stupidly cast off Kristen Stewart as a bad actor, who took bad roles. Recent films like Personal Shopper, Crimes of the Future, and Love Lies Bleeding have [rightfully] changed my opinion. Also, as a “cool” and “edgy” film school kid, I became obsessed with Vincent Cassel in Le Haine. Seeing these two actors work with each other was an on-screen match I wanted, but didn’t deserve. Both actors ooze charisma and chew up their scenes in the best way possible. 

Secondly, the cinematography. Bojan Bazelli (Sugar Hill, A Cure for Wellness) visually saves this film from Eubank’s milquetoast directing. Bazelli captures the claustrophobic Kepler beautifully. The scenes of the crew underwater are full of dread and suspense. Thirdly, the creature. It’s Monster May-hem, we have to talk about the creatures! Was the creature released upon the world from the earthquake? Or was it caused by drilling from the Kepler? It doesn’t really matter, all that does matter is she’s here and she’s BIG. How the creature comes to target our surviving crew members works incredibly well, and may be the only good thing to come from Duffield’s script. The mother creature is godly and truly terrifying, while her drones come in endless waves and fill both the crew members and the audience with indescribable dread. 

Those three things were nowhere near enough to save Underwater. First off, we have to talk about spiders. “But Brendan, we’re underwater!” Exactly! Norah starts the film by watching a spider in a sink drain. How exactly did this spider get to the bottom of the Mariana Trench? Perchance, is there a researcher on the Kepler who is doing spider research? Who knows! Certainly not Duffield. Next up, TJ Miller. As he’s been typecast, Miller plays a misogynistic, try-hard self-obsessed comedian, as he always does. Though, That’s not really considered acting for him. Or how about the fact that the Kepler was built with an option to weaponize its main power source? Seriously what engineer would add that feature into the Kepler? 

Underwater was a slog to sit through, and even the Lovecraftian god creature couldn’t make me enjoy it. Hell, even Kristen Stewart and Vincent Cassel couldn’t save it. At the film’s end, I wished I was lying at the bottom of the ocean. I have no clue how Duffield keeps getting these projects off the ground. And can we stop giving TJ Miller roles? Wasn’t he supposed to be canceled? 

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl go to a remote cabin. Boy and girl are terrorized by three masked murderers. It’s a tale as old as time.

But there was a time about 16 years ago when The Strangers hit audiences with this tried-and-true premise in a way that felt fresh and terrifying. It was bleak without being exhausting and frightening without being cheap (barring a few jumpscares). The franchise’s newest entry, The Strangers: Chapter One, attempts to take us back to those days with a reboot, but its execution shows that the time has passed for dwelling on the original’s successes. Now is the time for the series to outgrow the expectations set by the franchise.

‘The Strangers: Chapter One’ Revisits the Formula That Wowed Audiences, But Needs to Outgrow Its Legacy

Directed by genre film veteran Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea), the film is exactly what you’d expect: a return to basics, with a new couple slowly being tortured by a trio of masked killers who play a nasty game of cat and mouse. This time, Madelaine Petsch and Froy Guiterrez lead the film as couple Maya and Ryan, who run into roughly the same problems James and Kristen had in the first film; bog standard relationship troubles, and the occasional axe through the front door. Performance-wise, it’s nice to see Petsch adopting the mannerisms of a tried-and-true scream queen on her first go-around with a horror film, and even if the following two films aren’t knockouts, I’m interested to see how she approaches the character again. 

The above might seem like a massive spoiler if you haven’t been following the publicity around this film, so let me elaborate: Chapter One’s titling is a bit more literal to its planned trilogy. Harlin himself describes the three movies as really being one massive 4-and-a-half-hour-long movie that will have its last two parts released later in the year. This is only the beginning, which is usually said as a threat, but this time feels more complicated.  

The choice to shoot the trilogy altogether explains a lot of the film’s pacing problems: the last third of the film reaches the steady speed of a molasses drip, with an ending that felt more like the closer to the pilot of a Strangers TV series. The atmosphere is a cold dark forest, but the story moves with the languid motions of a heatwave-struck summer camp when we’re not in the thick of being attacked by cowled killers. 

We’re Hopeful for a More Imaginative Future

I have a bit more faith that Harlin plans on doing something very out there with his mega-film ambitions; after all, tripling the length of your film demands something that will keep your audience hooked across three screenings over multiple months, like giving Madelaine Petsch a grenade launcher or having the Man in the Mask turn the town of Venus, Oregon into a Twisted Metal arena with his Ford Ranger. But I’m left wondering if the ending Part One drops us off at will sour audiences on the concept.

In terms of what the film has to offer visually, Harlin and cinematographer José David Montero do interesting work. Chapter One’s aesthetics are at the center of a tug-of-war between the original Strangers film and its sequel Prey At Night, fighting to be both gritty and cleaner looking at the same time. The lighting and coloring are absolutely a step up from Prey at Night, but the mumbly darkness of the original only really makes itself known in shots and scenes that are direct homages. The scares land semi-regularly, but genuine fear is out of the office in favor of more thrilling chase sequences. There are a few moments that really get you, and others that I think will mainly work best in a packed theatre where audience reactions feed off each other. 

Though Chapter One feels like a more fun Strangers film at points, it doesn’t keep the energy up, and ultimately feels betrayed by its legacy. I’m under the impression that Prey at Night’s bold decisions and less-than-shining success at the box office might have just scared Lionsgate into taking the safe route, at least as far as opening the trilogy goes. It’s easy to backslide into comfort. But The Strangers: Chapter 2 and 3 have a great opportunity to dive into the deep end and take its audience into the unknown. In a year packed with exciting new movie prospects and original IPs popping up all over the place, Strangers has to go big or go home. Let’s hope the next two can make the hard-and-fast change of pace to do so.