I had meant to see Underwater at some point but dragged my feet until I happened to learn some spoilers, which then motivated me to search for it on a streaming service. Yes, sometimes spoilers actually make you want to watch something. I didn’t necessarily hear good or bad things, but some details that just happened to make it seem worth viewing. At just barely over 90 minutes, I was more than happy to watch it, even if it ended up being bad. I can say, however, that when the movie ended, I was more than pleased for a number of reasons.

Pros

Brisk pace with constant tension to move the plot and characters along
Special effects look good
Characters do not overstay their welcome
A conclusion that is fitting for the protagonist and her arc
Takes the right influence from other movies like Alien & The Descent
Just over 90 minutes

Cons

Some characters make dumb decisions because the movie requires it
A few lines of dialogue that are either unnecessary or fall into tropes of modern film writing
The director may claim that the thing revealed at the end is something in particular, but I disagree (vague, I know)
Bends the rules of its technology a bit too far with how long someone survives with a broken breathing apparatus
Narration at the beginning and end is unnecessary

Plot & Thoughts

Norah (Kristin Stewart) is an engineer at a deep-sea drilling facility, many fathoms below the ocean’s surface. She’s clearly a woman with a lot on her mind because we hear some narration from her that is melancholic, but vague. She’s getting ready for bed when suddenly the station shakes and the hull of the facility is breached for reasons unknown. She races down some hallways, slipping on water and hitting doors to wake people up. She runs into Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie) on the way to the lift and has to make a split-second decision to keep the doors open for other team members trying to escape or close the doors before the whole facility is destroyed. It’s an intense opening five minutes and already gives the characters a lot of drama and trauma to deal with before they even know what is happening.

Norah and Rodrigo make their way down through the remaining areas of the structure that are still intact and manage to find a few other survivors, including the leader of the group, Captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel). The escape pods are damaged and will not get them safely to the surface, so they have to find a way across the bottom of the ocean to an older drilling facility that might still have functioning escape pods. The six survivors suit up to go for a stroll at the bottom of the ocean, but it doesn’t take very long for disaster to strike and strike again in one form or another. New problems arise that force the characters to adapt or die.

While I was watching Underwater, several different pieces of media kept popping into my head, including: Alien, The Descent, SOMA, Sphere, Sunshine. All of these are better than Underwater, and the inspirations may not have come directly from these pieces of entertainment, but it is still comparable for positive reasons. It has some creative creature designs and effects like Alien. It has some good claustrophobic sequences and focuses on the discomfort of the characters in these situations for the first half before the external threats show up in the second half, like The Descent. It has an atmosphere and style similar to SOMA, Sunshine, and Sphere. For those who have the misfortune of not experiencing any of the influences I mentioned, it would be better to see all of them before Underwater, and not just because I’m trying to dance around some of the horror elements. Regardless, the ocean is a mysterious place filled with all sorts of creatures that we have yet to discover, so the setting of the bottom of the ocean is perfect to inject some unseen horrors for the characters to encounter.

Underwater manages to establish some fast pacing and rarely slows down for the rest of the movie as soon as it starts. Despite taking the time to establish the atmosphere of the bottom of the ocean and the horrors it might contain, it’s a very efficient movie. After the opening sequence with the flooding halls, which is very dramatic, there are slower scenes in which the team of survivors have to crawl through tight spaces that would make anyone who is slightly claustrophobic uncomfortable. There are also slower scenes in which characters are leaning over and looking at something that might be alive and they do not quite understand it. These are not as intense as the opening five minutes but manage to be just as engaging.

The majority of the film involves the survivors making their way across the ocean floor in special pressure-resistant suits. They all have to worry about the collapsing structure around them that could potentially crush them at any moment. They also have to worry about other deep-sea creatures that could kill them. The fact that their suits could be slowly killing them all due to their air filters failing over time only adds to the tension—even though that invisible timer ends up being extremely arbitrary and could have been resolved if the characters used their heads.

There are plenty of nitpicks I have of Underwater that prevent it from being as good as the media that inspired it. There are some scenes where characters make deliberately dumb moves—even other characters call it out—for another scene to happen, which is disappointing. If you couldn’t figure out a way to make that scene happen, why make your characters dumb to do so? My main issues, however, have to do with some of the script.

There is some narration at the beginning and end of the movie. I tend not to like narration in movies unless it serves some explicit purpose of characterization or world-building. I don’t think the narration in Underwater adds anything to the experience. If the filmmakers wanted to keep what is said, I think it would have been better if the character just had it in dialogue with someone else, but it still isn’t that interesting. It’s just flavor text to tell us the real thesis of the movie in some poetic form. Had they cut these pieces of narration out and the lines of dialogue where Norah is reaffirming the other female survivor with praise like a child instead of an adult in a dangerous situation, I think the script would have been a lot tighter.

TL;DR

Even though I knew just a little too much about Underwater before I watched it, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. It clearly took inspiration from other movies but also managed to imitate them in all the right ways. The pacing is good. The imagery is striking. There is constant tension. If you like Alien, The Descent, Sphere, etc., there’s a good chance you’ll like Underwater. Even if you don’t like it, it’s just barely over 90 minutes which makes it less of a disappointing investment of your time than most movies these days.

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