“Underwater,” the ocean thriller with an A-list cast, was actually nothing more than a modernized knock-off of “Alien.”
“Underwater” takes place in a drilling facility at the bottom of the ocean where an organization of people reside to maintain the condition of the drill.
After a large earthquake hits, the station suffers from a breach which wipes out a good portion of the staff and facility.
Mechanical engineer Norah Price (Kristen Stewart) survives the initial blast with coworker, Rodrigo Nagenda (Mamoudou Athie) who then meet up with others who also happened to survive the horrible catastrophe.
With the addition of Paul Abel (T.J. Miller), Emily Haversham (Jessica Henwick), Captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel), and Liam Smith (John Gallagher Jr.), the crew have to travel a few miles across the bottom of the ocean towards the Roebuck Station 641, where escape pods to the surface are located, but they soon find out that a mysterious unknown creature is lurking in the same water they have to cross.
From the start of the movie, the audience was thrown straight into the action. There was no backstory, no prologue, no context as to what was going on besides an underwater base closing in on itself. Only through the very limited side conversation is the viewer able to figure out that an earthquake had caused the facility to collapse, but even then the details were confusing to keep up with.
Stewart, well known for her main role in the Twilight sagas, is the heroine who has enough knowledge the survive to technological obstacles that come in the way of escaping to the surface. Her character was a strong-headed, stubborn mechanic who puts other’s lives before her own, yet due to the lack of detail and background, it made these high-quality characteristics fall flat and made her seem as expendable as the others.
As for thrill factor, it wasn’t impressive. There were only one or two moments in the movie that actually scared me, but after the first few scenes, there seems to be a growing understanding that most of the characters are going to die off; it was just a matter of how.
It also seemed like there wasn’t any break in the movie where there wasn’t panic, distress, or death around every corner. It left me feeling no connection or desire to see the characters continue on in the movie, instead just wondering who’d be the next one to die off in the thriller.
The addition of the mysterious blood-lusted sea creature did not add anything special to the movie. If anything, the very real dangers of suffocation, pressurisation, and drowning at that ocean level put me more on the edge of my seat than some wannabe remake of “Alien.”
Overall, I’d give “Underwater” 3 out of 5 stars. While the movie itself seemed very suffocating with little to no break in between action scene, the visuals and CGI were well done. I would recommend this to an audience who doesn’t like horror movies but does like to have some sort of suspense, and for people who enjoy action movies. However, for those who frequently watch or enjoy scary movies, “Underwater” is a walk in the park.