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?