UNDERWATER: Sunk By Familiarity

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia posited that the deeply depressed would handle the end of the world better than anyone else, the idea being that they’ve lived in the hopeless abyss, marched through it every day and still managed to put one foot in front of the other, so the end of the world would be business as usual. This is not a reference I thought would come to mind when watching Underwater, the latest Alien ripoff to put a group of everyday workers in the cross hairs of some unknown species, but there I was imagining Kristen Stewart’s Norah staring unflinchingly at a looming planet, and honestly, it fit.

That’s because Norah is the steady one of the group, a no-nonsense soul trudging through her shifts on a drill deep in the Mariana Trench (you know, the deepest part of the ocean that’s long been hypothesized by scuzzy science fiction writers to harbor humanity’s doom). The opening scene establishes some numbing trauma before plunging her into the adventure, and as she works through each ratcheting dilemma, it’s not hard to imagine that the writers of Underwater had a similar notion as Von Trier about the kind of person who would make it through such a crazy situation.

Or perhaps that’s giving the people responsible for Underwater too much credit, because this isn’t exactly insightful sci-fi. This is tense, unrelenting, kind of dumb science fiction, the kind that’s more concerned with pulling off the next thrill than developing its spotty ideas. And yet those ideas are there, reaching for meaning so far out of its grasp that it’s almost cute to see it try. Poor little Underwater. It does try, but it’s still a jumbled mess.

Not A Complete Airhead

The threads that do run through Underwater are unmistakable right from the opening credits. A hokey exposition dump of newspaper headlines and highlighted reports establish a company hell-bent on drilling, ignoring strange phenomena as they establish a sprawling facility. We dive down to find Stewart brushing her teeth, a mundane act taking place in a monotone, spiritless housing section of the facility. Sound familiar? That’s because the industrial set design is lifted straight from Alien, as is the overhanging threat of greedy, reckless corporations.

The facility is abruptly attacked and our ragtag group of survivors assemble, who all have vaguely defined positions and relationships. Stewart is an engineer, which apparently means she can fix anything (that’s how engineers work, right?). Vincent Cassel is the captain, aka default leader, while Jessica Henwick is the nervous young one romantically paired with John Gallagher Jr.’s generic nice guy.

T.J. Miller is also running around as a thankfully subdued T.J. Miller-esque character and Mamoudou Athie is a nervous, obedient follower. Okay, none of them of are complete characters, but each get a thing to play, and each actor is matched well enough to their role that they can pretty much pull it off in their sleep.

Stewart’s is the only head we enter, and that’s done through awkward voice-over bookends. These prove largely unnecessary, as Stewart is capable of getting across the resilience of her down but not out character much better than this film’s screenwriters. Not that it’s a hard job; audiences understand a Ripley derivative, and Stewart’s Norah is a Ripley derivative, right down to a running around in her underwear unnecessarily (can we please stop referencing this bit of Alien?). The wrinkle to her character is the aforementioned depression, and seeing her slog resolutely through the movie’s craziness is its only truly interesting metaphor, which it squanders in a resolution that many will find troubling. Still, the idea is there and mildly interesting, so nice try, I guess?

Maintaining The Thrill

The best thing Underwater has going for it is its pace, which is so full throttle, pedal to the metal that it’s easy to miss the movie’s numerous shortcomings. The characters are sketches, yes, but that allows it to eschew the usual twenty minutes of boring setup. It gets right to the action, with the facility going down in the opening sequence. Things never let up from there, and while the endless stream of set pieces is jarring in the early going, you eventually settle in to the ride director William Eubank constructs.

This does break a pretty basic tenant of building excitement, which a character in the film explains best: waiting in line for a roller coaster is the best part. There’s barely any anticipation here, which means the thrills are never big enough to be memorable. They come so quickly that it does sustain a moderate amount of tension, though, and Eubank has a flair for immersing you in a few particularly triggering scenarios (I’m claustrophobic and a few bits had me squirming in my seat).

Where it occasionally falters is in some poorly mapped out bits of action, ones where the lack of setup and disorientingly shaky camera means you have no clue who is where and what they’re trying to do. These pass quickly, though, and are never long enough to break the tension entirely. Once a monster pops up you basically know which direction the survivors should run in, and this is a movie where the immediate action is all that really matters.

Conclusion: Underwater

Look, this movie is being dumped. Disney is dumping a lot of the movies it acquired from Fox, the latter of whom was more than willing to sit on projects that didn’t pan out as expected. Underwater was shot in 2017, and knowing that it’s hard not to expect a disaster. This isn’t an outright disaster, but it’s not a diamond in the rough, either. There’s no ideas that aren’t lifted from somewhere else, and even those ideas aren’t explored in any meaningful way. But there’s effort here from the game cast and a director that at least had the good sense to keep things moving, and that lifts it to the level of forgettable schlock. If it’s your kind of schlock, sure, you won’t be mad at it. Everyone else? Wait for something worth your time.

Underwater was released in the US on January 10th, 2020. It will be released in the UK on February 7th, 2020. For international release dates, click here.