Underwater (2020)
Directed by William Eubank
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick, John Gallagher Jr., Mamoudou Athie, T.J. Miller
Plot Synopsis: (via IMDb)
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.
My Opinion:
When looking this up I noticed that the writer, Brian Duffield, was also the director of Spontaneous, which I liked a lot. He also wrote Love And Monsters & The Babysitter so he has an interesting list of films. Guess he’s a name to look out for for now! I liked this one a bit less than those but it was still an enjoyable film. I always enjoy these intense deepwater thrillers.
I mentioned in my review for Happiest Season that Kristen Stewart carries this whole movie. She does & she’s good in this but, as some people don’t like her, that may turn them off wanting to watch this as she’s by far the main character and, I’m thinking, in every single scene? Were there any without her? She’s the Ellen Ripley of the deep sea instead of space (but obviously still not nearly as cool as Ripley – no one ever will be). She even runs around in tiny underwear just like Ripley (not sure if that is necessary but I suppose I’d run around in tiny underwear if I had a sexy young body too). This seems a weird role for her after doing so many roles in things such as Personal Shopper. I prefer her in those sort of roles and don’t see her as an action star but she did really well here.
See? Tiny underwear!
I wanted to like this movie a bit more as it’s my type of thing. It’s one of those where I’m not sure why I didn’t like it a bit more. I felt something was missing but can’t for the life of me figure out what. It has good action, pretty good characters (although they all could have used much more development, including Stewart’s), and a cool reason for the earthquake that destroys their underwater facility. I’m staying spoiler-free here as the plot synopsis says nothing about that so I don’t know if it was marketed as a slightly different thing? But it ended up being the type of movie I was hoping for. Hmm. Yeah, all of those things were good. I don’t know – I think it was mainly because we didn’t get to know these characters at all. There are things hinted at, such as with Vincent Cassel’s having a daughter & Stewart having had a boyfriend or fiancé plus we get one couple who are likeable and you want them to survive together but you also don’t know much about them either. It’s one of those movies that dives (ha! dives! because it’s underwater…) straight into the action with no setup of any characters first, which always throws me a bit. And even though the action starts immediately, the movie still takes too long to get to the cool good stuff.
Well, I liked this one just fine. I want to give it a slightly higher rating. I suppose it’s also hurt by the fact that we’ve seen so many films like this & there are better examples of this sort of thing. But Stewart is really good as the movie’s big action hero plus I liked the ending a lot and I’m always picky about movie endings. There’s a great final scene with Stewart. If you’re a big fan of hers, I’d definitely recommend this as I think you’d really enjoy it.
My Rating: 6.5/10
