Checked out the second January 2020 low expectation horror flick Underwater. This film was finished a couple years ago but went into limbo and the 20th Century Fox sale to Disney. It was dumped in January which doesn’t bode well for it and its low expectations. And… well… the movie certainly succeeds at being exactly what it is… a (competent) B sci-fi thriller with modest ambitions.
So Underwater is about an underwater drilling rig that starts to fall apart and her crew has to suit up to survive. What is causing the collapse of the deep (VERY deep) drilling station? An earthquake, like they think? Nah. It’s creatures. Underwater monsters lurking in the inky (very VERY inky) depths. Really… you replace the diving gear with space suits and you get the Alien knockoff this movie is clearly striving to be.
This movie is ok. It’s not going to knock anyone’s socks off and if you aren’t into this kind of monster movie flick, you needn’t bother. But folks who like some claustrophobic B movie mayhem, it’s better than I expected it to be. It’s got a modest budget but pretty good production values and acting.
But that low budget does come up to bite them in the butt once the action leaves the habitats and winds up in the murky darkness of the ocean floor. You could argue a bunch of sci-fi movie bait trudging across the sea floor in pitch blackness could be artistic and creative license… or it could be them hiding their budget in blackness. This actually worked well for the sci-fi flick Pitch Black… but this movie isn’t quite that good. The murky darkness doesn’t add to the suspense… it just makes things hard to see, the creatures vague and indistinct, and the action pretty much nonsensical.
Which is too bad since I otherwise respect the gumption of this film. It’s swinging for the fences while remaining solidly in its lane as a basic beer and pretzels suspense/horror flick. It isn’t trying to trick you into thinking its high art and its much better produced than crappy retreads. Not gonna say it’s great and not going to say its worth seeing for everyone, but its not a bad little picture.
Score: 78