Underwater

This review may contain spoilers!

This film imitates the Alien films so blatantly that it is quite frankly shameless. I would give Underwater a 4.5/10.

Underwater sees an advanced underwater drilling station devastated by a mysterious underwater earthquake that only leaves a fraction of the crew alive. The lone six survivors must now rely on their skills and each other to cross the ocean floor, reach the next exploration outpost and survive the creatures that seem to be hunting them. While the feature suffers consistently in regards to plot and dialogue there is no denying that this is one stellar example of a monster film. Underwater does a really good job at establishing and presenting something otherworldly and alien to the audience, enough to get you intrigued. The interest only grows as you begin to see snatches of the monster and realise that what you're seeing isn't limited to one creature. But all of this by no means prepares you for the big reveal around the monster come the end of the film, it was one of the only instances in which the feature both met and then exceeded my expectations. The special effects that accompanied the monsters was very well done, it felt like the vision around what they wanted to achieve with that was the driving force of the film and in that regard it paid off.

Kristen Stewart, who played Nora, does a reasonable job as the leading protagonist; Stewart suffers when she has to play more stoic but when she's delivering fear, a desperate scrabble for survival or just plain empathy then you get to see some of her better skill set shine through.

However, the best performance came from T.J. Miller, who played Paul. From the moment this role comes onscreen he provides something different tonally from the rest of the cast; not just a strong sense of humour but a persistent presence in the eyes of the audiences. Miller didn't let the camera play over him and move on, he was constantly switched on and coming at each scene with high energy. This character was definitely the film's comedy, he quick-delivery quips were absolutely brilliant and unrelenting. This was a role that the performer found the fun in inhabiting and allowed you to enjoy that too, a significant reason why Miller stands out.

Jessica Henwick, who played Emily, is a very flighty role wrapped up into a romantic subplot that no one leaves the theatre caring about; Henwick's role is never given much definition and I struggle to describe her actual purpose in the film. Vincent Cassel, who played the Captain, is a stoic role who seems to be completely devoid of the ability to portray emotions; Cassel blankly delivers exposition and repetitive dialogue right up till his exit and it is by far the laziest performance of the bunch. John Gallagher Jr., who played Smith, is by far the most forgettable member of the main cast; barring a pretty bland spouting of some exposition and machismo Gallagher Jr. spends most of the film flat on his back in the background. Mamoudou Athie, who played Rodrigo, really sets quite a mild beginning to the film; Athie is one of the first roles we meet and he is quite unimpressionable and continues to be so until the end of the first act.

Underwater really feels like a lazy script for the greater majority of the film, the base structure of the feature is almost completely a carbon copy of the Alien film and there are several instances throughout the story where plot details from Alien are utilised directly. Everything throughout the film happens out of circumstance or poor explanations; the film staggers through why the captain stays behind or that the whole facility is compromised for instance. The main cast of characters are a bunch of extremely stoic individuals who lack personality and never really matter much to the story unless they're the main role. Each character comes equipped with a particular backstory or relationship but once again the script doesn't do a great effort at explaining these so you're left to piece it all together yourself, only to discover it never really matters to the plot. The film really only evidenced a majority of extremely questionable exposition or straight up bad personal dialogue between characters. Underwater was a film that placed most of its budget into visual effects but still lacked the money to impress in every shot, you got a strong sense of the camera early on when it began pulling away from a more interesting angle to keep within the realms of possibility. The score for this film might very well not have existed, the tracks were so very few and far between that some scenes just felt like they weren't achieving what they wanted in terms of tone.