Underwater movie poster - movie review blog
“A crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep sea drilling company try to get to safety after a mysterious earthquake devastates their deepwater research and drilling facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.”
Set in the murky world of a deepwater drilling facility we open on Norah (Kristen Stewart) as she dresses, we assume, for her morning stint as a mechanical engineer on board of a massive drilling platform in the depths of the Mariana trench. Set in a heavily influenced ‘Alien’ grunge design aesthetic - from the long corridors to the deliberate slow moving camera movements - Norah is thrown into an emergency situation where the drilling platform is subjected to a massive earthquake, causing an evacuation.
It’s a great, fast paced opening. The effects are impressive and it’s easily one of the better sequences in the movie. Along the way Norah finds a rag tag group of employees. Together they must embark on a treacherous journey along the Mariana trench to find escape pods to the surface.
Diving preperation
Despite its obvious nods to Alien and the abyss I found the movie mostly entertaining. Kristen Stewart is often a very polarising actress, she has a somewhat limited range, but her performance here is quite good. Even through the script doesn’t ask very much of her. In fact it’s probably fair to say that the script doesn’t ask much of any of the actors. They are single dimensional characters, stereotypical of the genre adding nothing new.
A scene early on involving a ‘baby sea monster’ is a major misstep echoing far too closely a very famous scene from ‘Alien’. In truth the movie really wants to be ‘Alien’ underwater. From it’s grunge aesthetic to the lone female heroine and nods to scenes throughout the movie. Norah is Ripley lite, the reluctant hero. But what Alien had in abundance: Tension and suspense sadly Underwater lacks.
Kirsten Stewart - underwater
What it needed was a feeling of claustrophobia, being in the deepest part of the ocean under literal pressure where one misstep will cause you to loose your life. The movie didn’t feel very claustrophobic. For me it nearly would have made a better disaster movie without creatures in it at all. As it stands there is very little story to latch onto. The main plot is a series of narrow escapes, traveling from point A to B losing one crew member after the next.
For the most part the movie looks great, the design of the underwater suits are really nice. Cinematography is great and how they shot the underwater walking sequences are really impressive. It’s just a shame the creature design is a little uninspired.
I’m a huge fan of underwater movies like The abyss so this movie should have been right up my alley. For the most part I enjoyed it but I felt it strayed to closely to Alien at times which spoiled it quite a bit for me.
Overall the movie is very watchable and moves very quickly. If you’re looking for something more than that then you may be disappointed.