Catch-Up Review: Underwater

I made things a bit difficult for myself by deciding to finally start this blog during a pandemic. One of the things I want to do with it is review new horror movies when they come out, but aside from a few VOD releases, it looks like we won't be getting anything new for a while. Luckily, I was able to see a few good movies before the theaters shut down, so while this dearth of new films continues, I'm going to be doing some catch-up reviews of movies that came out earlier this year.

Our first catch-up review is for Underwater, a movie that came out quietly in January without much fanfare or buzz. Admittedly, when I first heard about this film, I was skeptical. For one, its release month didn't inspire much confidence. January is usually a month when studios dump all their bad movies, so I thought this one would be just another January dump. Secondly, this movie is rated PG-13, and anything other than an R rating is often (but not always) a bad sign for horror movies. And finally, the trailers didn't look that impressive. They made it seem like just another generic monster movie.

But when I went to the theater and saw it, I was pleasantly surprised. While Underwater isn't a great film, and it's probably never going to be a beloved classic, it's a nice little monster movie. It's about a deep-sea drilling station that's destroyed by an earthquake, and the survivors have to find a way to get to safety. The escape pods have already been deployed, so their only hope for survival is to walk more than a mile on the ocean floor to the next station. On the way there, they have to deal with both the pressure of seven miles of water above them (if their suits crack even a little bit, they die instantly) and some mysterious monsters that mankind has never encountered before.

If you think that sounds a bit generic, you're not wrong. It's not the most original premise in the world, and the movie doesn't pretend it is. However, it's executed really well, and that makes up for the lack of originality. From the very first minute, the characters are under constant pressure (no pun intended) to survive in tense and very dangerous conditions. Even in moments of levity or relative safety, there's always a chance that things might go south in an instant and kill them all, and that unrelenting tension is what drives the movie. It keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time, wondering what's going to happen next and what new dangers may be lurking just beyond the range of visibility in the murky waters.

The best part of all this is definitely the monsters, as the film strikes a good balance between showing them on-screen and hinting at their presence in other ways (like strange noises whose source you can't see). You see them enough to satisfy your hunger for monster mayhem, but the movie avoids the mistake of showing them so much that they lose their mystique. The creature designs are also pretty cool, so when they're on-screen, they're a delight to watch.

All that being said, the movie does have its flaws. Since the pressure is on from the very first minute, you don't get to know any of the characters before the action starts. Rather, you get to know them as the movie goes on, and unfortunately, that doesn't work too well. The film spends so much time on tension and suspense that it forgets to give the characters any real substance. It does the absolute bare minimum of character development, and it's just passable enough that it doesn't ruin the movie.

At about an hour and a half, the film is short enough that they could've easily added in an extra fifteen or twenty minutes to flesh these characters out and let us connect with them, and I really wish they had. While the movie does a great job of showing the danger they're in, you don't really care what happens to them. You can appreciate the suspense and enjoy it for what it is, but you don't feel a personal connection to anybody in the movie. Because of that, as good as this film is, it would've been a lot better if they had given the characters more substance. Things like tension, suspense, and danger always work better when you care about the characters, so the filmmakers really missed out on an opportunity to take their movie to the next level. While it's still a good film, its lack of character development keeps it from reaching its full potential and being more than just a fun ride with monsters.

Before we end, I have to make special mention of the last fifteen (or so) minutes. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that something pretty cool happens that makes everything that came before it even better. It made me want to immediately watch it again and see the whole movie through the lens of those last fifteen minutes, and while I didn't find the movie drastically different the second time, I did enjoy it a bit more.

So all in all, if you're a fan of monster movies, I would definitely recommend that you check out Underwater if you didn't see it in theaters. It's not the greatest monster movie ever, and it's not going to win any Oscars or change the course of movie history, but it's a fun little creature feature that does what a film of this kind should do. It has a ton of suspense and tension that will keep your eyes fixed on the screen, and it features some cool monsters that you're going to want to see again after the credits roll.