Underwater
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I was going to write a proper review, but meh. Maybe later. I'll just say this was a complete disappointment. I actually had expectations 
. There was so much potential for it to be something really great, the material was there. Instead it just became a new addition to the ever growing mound of dung where most
films tend to rest.
. There was so much potential for it to be something really great, the material was there. Instead it just became a new addition to the ever growing mound of dung where most
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I was pleasantly surprised by this. Didn't expect much but it ended up being even good. Much better than the average "spoiler" film even though:
WARNING: "Opinion about the spoiler in the previous post" spoilers below
The director has said that the big monster is Cthulhu but in my opinion, it would make much more sense if it's Dagon.
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My impression is that it was a bit of a missed opportunity. It's not a bad film, but it's not a good one by any stretch of the imagination. Kristen Stewart's chararcter is pretty much a deep sea version of Ripley from the Aliens franchise, and not a whole lot going on with any of the other characters either really. It was kinda by the numbers that made me think of similiar films from the 80's, such as Leviathan. It had potential and could have been something really cool, but it is pretty much by the numbers.
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That's the sad part, because the average "spoiler" movie is usually crap. But whenever one comes out I tend to be all over it hoping it'll be different. It very rarely is. 
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Underwater (2020) (Dir. William Eubank) ★★☆☆☆ Watched 28 Mar, 2020
More of a disaster film than a monster flick, Underwater turns endless depths into a coffin-like void. The literal pressure of the film is conveyed at first within the tight corridors of the increasingly fragile structure, but more thoroughly during the harrowing treks outside of it. The comparisons to Alien are obvious, but whereas Ridley erected a haunted house in space with his cast being picked off, Eubank is more concerned with sending his characters across an environment as much of a threat as any Thing. Think The Towering Inferno or more aptly The Poseiden Adventutre with a monster element in the background. Of course, Eubank does intentionally and admirably use space as a touchstone to accurately express the human adverse conditions and sheer wonder of our vast, unexplored oceans.
One of the biggest pitfalls in comparing this film to the Alien Franchise is in creature design. These Cthulu/Cloverfield caricatures are a far cry from H.R. Giger's signature work. If you're going to play up the short haired, capable femme protagonist with pandering feminism, at least reemploy the phallic nature of the beast to symbolic ends. Of course, environmentalism is also used for progressive point scoring which would make humanity the antagonist instead of the squid monsters. Those crossed wires render the ending nonsensical complete with lip service towards a thoroughly liberal bastardization of anti-capitalist messaging.
Okay, so the previous paragraph makes you think this film is teeming with ideology, but it's really not. So how successfully do the characters and their relations provide anchor points for what is essentially a disaster romp? Kristen Stewart is more iconography than anything as she's asked to hyperventilate more often than she is to sell her tragic past. The tacked on narration is a dead giveaway with how poorly they've built her arc into the climax. Of course, TJ Miller is cast as the comedic relief and given leeway to improvise. That alone is rather damning.
I could talk about this movie all day, but it's not terrible. It's what it says on the box with a few things that probably only annoyed me thrown in. As somebody who will probably rewatch Deep Blue Sea a few times before I die, I can't be too mad at it. I will say Daniel Espinosa's Life (2017) is an utterly superior option if you're looking specifically for an Alien ripoff. Evil Flubber was cool.
More of a disaster film than a monster flick, Underwater turns endless depths into a coffin-like void. The literal pressure of the film is conveyed at first within the tight corridors of the increasingly fragile structure, but more thoroughly during the harrowing treks outside of it. The comparisons to Alien are obvious, but whereas Ridley erected a haunted house in space with his cast being picked off, Eubank is more concerned with sending his characters across an environment as much of a threat as any Thing. Think The Towering Inferno or more aptly The Poseiden Adventutre with a monster element in the background. Of course, Eubank does intentionally and admirably use space as a touchstone to accurately express the human adverse conditions and sheer wonder of our vast, unexplored oceans.
One of the biggest pitfalls in comparing this film to the Alien Franchise is in creature design. These Cthulu/Cloverfield caricatures are a far cry from H.R. Giger's signature work. If you're going to play up the short haired, capable femme protagonist with pandering feminism, at least reemploy the phallic nature of the beast to symbolic ends. Of course, environmentalism is also used for progressive point scoring which would make humanity the antagonist instead of the squid monsters. Those crossed wires render the ending nonsensical complete with lip service towards a thoroughly liberal bastardization of anti-capitalist messaging.
Okay, so the previous paragraph makes you think this film is teeming with ideology, but it's really not. So how successfully do the characters and their relations provide anchor points for what is essentially a disaster romp? Kristen Stewart is more iconography than anything as she's asked to hyperventilate more often than she is to sell her tragic past. The tacked on narration is a dead giveaway with how poorly they've built her arc into the climax. Of course, TJ Miller is cast as the comedic relief and given leeway to improvise. That alone is rather damning.
I could talk about this movie all day, but it's not terrible. It's what it says on the box with a few things that probably only annoyed me thrown in. As somebody who will probably rewatch Deep Blue Sea a few times before I die, I can't be too mad at it. I will say Daniel Espinosa's Life (2017) is an utterly superior option if you're looking specifically for an Alien ripoff. Evil Flubber was cool.
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