Underwater, a Sci Fi Thriller Starring Kristen Stewart

      Underwater (2020, directed by William Eubank) was shot in 2017.  Disney bought 20th Century Fox, delaying its release.  The film cost eighty million dollars, grossed forty million worldwide.  I entered the casino with a hundred dollars in my pocket, left with fifty.  Do I feel good?  Did I at least have a good time?

     The title, Underwater, might make a viewer picture a murder mystery set near a lake.  A body, maybe, weighted with chains at a depth of thirty-seven feet in murky water.  This film, though, takes place at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 36,069 feet below sea level, in A.D. 2050.  The Tian Corporation, a mega-business participating in what seems to be a final desperate bid to extract oil from the most remote spot on Earth, has constructed stations in the Trench, including Roebuck Station, the drilling platform serving as the destination of the small number of survivors from a different related station after a powerful earthquake wrecks their location.  At Roebuck is the escape pod system.  The group, in armored suits that might withstand the pressures of Venus, must traverse the sea floor, guided by lit-up markers, going first to Midway Station and then to Roebuck.

     Vincent Cassel plays the leader, although he doesn't do a lot of leading.  Most of the pluck comes from Kristen Stewart's character, hair whitish blonde and cut very short, two scars from cuts on her face after the earthquake demolishes most of the first station.  T.J. Miller plays a wisecracking man who carries with him a small stuffed rabbit toy for some reason.  This rabbit survives the film along with two others, including Jessica Henwick as Emily, the most annoying character.  She's annoying because she's always about to lose her shit, crying or about to.  Granted, the situation is dire, especially when some very weird Lovecraftian creatures start menacing the group on their trek to Roebuck, but Emily nonetheless has no problem touching, without gloves, the first creature they encounter: a pink squishy living embryonic Cthulhu, equipped with talons and a tendency to burst into nerve-jolting motion.

     "This must be a new species," she says, calmly.

     No shit, Emily.

     Having seen Alien and the original The Poseidon Adventure (the two films Underwater most resembles) I knew that most if not all of these characters would die.  That's how I retained fifty dollars from my casino visit.  Kristen Stewart's character, Norah, does provide a twist, however, sacrificing herself for the annoying-to-the-end Emily and Liam (John Gallagher, Jr.).  There are, you see, three escape pods, two work and one doesn't.  I saw this coming, too, but Norah doesn't let on to the others the truth of that.  Her goodbye is final, not, "I'll see you six and a half miles above our heads provided we escape from these weird monsters unleashed from beneath the sea floor."

     Even then, Emily protests, wanting to go up last, or maybe she realizes the third pod doesn't work.  Norah punches her in the face, pushes the goggle-eyed pain in the ass into the second pod and shoots her up after the wounded Liam.  A calmness, as before the realization of imminent death, settles over Norah.  She sets controls to blow the nuclear reactor, watching the Cthulhu master monster of hideous and behemoth proportions, reminding herself in the VoiceOver narration of the timelessness of this strange place, even as the countdown turns her body and brain into scattered atoms, along with the creatures, or most of them.

     I don't want to give the impression that this film isn't worth watching.  I found it entertaining enough.  Some would say, "claustrophobic" to describe its atmosphere, which is true, but it helps that it's only a little over ninety minutes long.  I felt a much truer sense of being underwater than I did when watching Aquaman (2018).  Obviously, the bottom of the Mariana Trench is dark, but the suits have lights and flashlight beams on them, and there are lit markers and the Stations too are lit up.  Even so, the film's dark atmosphere makes it difficult to comprehend what's happening in the action scenes.

     I suppose that in the interest of emphasizing the two main female characters, Norah and Emily, the filmmakers made the men less important.  In the case of T.J. Miller's character, he's just a jackass.  I didn't care that he got his leg chewed off and died.  From that point on I didn't have to hear his stupid comments.

     Vincent Cassel (Lucien) is referred to as "Captain," but he doesn't seem to have much to say at vital moments when a real leader would take command and get everybody safely where they need to go.  He dies at the Trench's bottom, suit compromised, let go by Norah, the "Ripley" of the film, if you get the Alien reference.  The difference between that 1979 science fiction horror film and this one is that the seven characters in Alien all come across as solid well-drawn characters, flawed, argumentative with each other, but good at working together.  In Underwater, no one seems to be in command, decisions are made more by group consensus than anything else.  In such a state of emergency, this is not how things can work properly.  Emily whining and always on the verge of tears (except when she's handling a completely bizarre and probably dangerous creature) interrupts the flow of tension.  Do we need to understand her feelings at this time?  Norah should've punched her near the beginning of the movie.

     I liked how the movie gets right into the disaster.  By about the ninth minute the shit has hit the fan.  Chaotic action, flight from danger, rescue of T.J. Miller from underneath a fallen piece of masonry (unfortunately, for he's cracking wise right away), everything in the opening scenes works well in the wrecked first station.  Once they get moving across the ocean floor things stop and start, get intense, even ridiculous depending on how much you want to believe in the existence of these creatures.  For one thing, they're aggressive, maybe carnivorous, so what do they feed on beneath the surface of the earth?  Is there a quasi-civilization of these things?  Has mankind "drilled too deep," as a cliche might have it?

     The ending credits feature headlines suggesting cover-up and plans by the corporation to clean up the mess and get back to drilling.  

     Sequel?  

     No, because forty million dollars is less than eighty-million dollars.

     

Vic Neptune