Underwater: A Loud and Obnoxious Jumpscare-Fest
In Underwater, a group of scientists (gee, where have I seen that before?) encounter a group of “sea-creatures” (a big, undefeatable Kraken leads the rest of the Xenomorph-like creatures) after an earthquake destroys part of their laboratory and ship. Led by a great cast, William Eubank’s Underwater is the first big dud of the new decade — and sets the table for a high probability of bad films at Disney this year.
Underwater represents everything I hate with most modern horror movies. It’s got dumb, asinine writing that presents to us dumb characters who act like bumbling fools and keep making the worst, most head-scratching decisions instead of thinking rationally, while the “scary creature” is nothing but a jumpscare machine. This is exactly what Underwater is. The number [unnecessary] jumpscares this movie has is incredible. Instead of genuinely scaring the scientists by their look and their menacing demeanor, all the sea creatures do is go at their face and loudly scream, just so the audience member can react. There are also many fake-outs, meaning that the music will play louder than usual to give a fake-jumpscare to the audience, it’s either a dead body or T.J. Miller pranking the crew. I seriously cannot believe that this movie got released with T.J. Miller in this — why is he still a thing?
I’ve heard that the movie was shot in 2017, so that explains everything, and due to FOX acquiring Disney, the film was on the shelf for quite some time (including New Mutants lol), but holy hell was T.J. Miller annoyingly terrible in this. I will say that he did have one effective moment, when he died. Now, I don’t wish anyone death, and it’s clearly not what I meant, but his death scene was very well-done. It’s probably the only moment that the film’s CGI looks convincing and scary. When his face gets squished by the Alien and it blows up inside of his helmet, leaving a pool of blood. I’ll say this, for a PG-13 rated horror movie, the violence is quite explicit and it is a hard PG-13, bordering on R. The film’s special effects are quite grandiose, at least the film’s cinematography from Bojan Bazelli makes everything look and sound grandiose. He shoots exactly the way he did Six Underground, many shots following the aesthetics of a Michael Bay production — but it is welcomed due to the film’s excessive use of slow-mo and large-scale explosions. The film tries so hard to convince you that you’re watching an epic production, with large-scale monsters being served as jumpscare-porn instead of doing something truly menacing. The big monster at the end reminded me of a final boss in a water temple of a Zelda game — undefeatable with the exception of a weak spot (in this case, a huge-ass explosion).
That being said, I’m glad (most of) the cast is great and chemistry between the team of scientists is palpable enough to watch. The film is commandeered by a terrific Kristen Stewart in a role we haven’t seen in her career yet, and I’m glad she did it. She completely immerses herself in the mind of an underwater scientist, as much as John Gallagher Jr., Vincent Cassel (whose name “W. Lucien” cracks me up, because he doesn’t have a first name lmao) and Jessica Henwick who actually gives a credible performance. The characters’ fate are pre-determined at the beginning, meaning you can tell who will die and who will survive. It’s one of Underwater’s most underlying problems, a predictable script. With many action sequences being inherently loud and obnoxiously boring, filled with cheap-jumpscares and a predictable structure, Underwater desperately lacks an R-Rating and a compelling story. Its story is almost non-existent, which makes the viewing experience feel frustrating. Disney is off to a terrible start in 2020, but things can only get better from here, right?!?? RIGHT!?!?! Oh……
✯✯
