Directed by: William Eubank
Release date: January 10th, 2020
Rating: 7/10
Underwater, directed by William Eubank, is one of the first films to hit theaters in 2020. I don’t expect much when it comes to early year releases, as it’s been shown that studios like to dump movies they think are bad or won’t be very successful. This movie pleasantly surprised me. It takes place at the bottom of the ocean, where a drilling crew is met with a series of catastrophic failures in their systems that leads them in need of finding a way back to the surface. SPOILER ALERT: They aren’t alone in the depths of the ocean.
Now I would love not to say anything about the creatures that cause this destruction, but I will because 1) It’s pretty easy to pick up on in the marketing and 2) I can’t really review the film without mentioning it.
Kristen Stewart, the lead actress in the movie, does a great job. She certainly has come a long way since Twilight I’ll say that much. She really sells being terrified and claustrophobic while fighting through that fear in order to survive. I would say that she really carries the movie.
Apart from acting, the action is directed extremely well. There are plenty of sequences filled with tension coming from either a ticking clock, or fear of the unknown. Theres a scene when the crew has to free walk along the bottom of the ocean, knowing that there are mysterious creatures who live down there and are watching them, all in complete darkness as to not give away their position.
The cinematography in these scenes is perfect. Usually I’m not the biggest fan of shaky camera shots. However, in this movie they use them just enough and don’t shake them too roughly to where it really added to the atmosphere of being trapped underneath the ocean.
Clearly, this film takes a lot of inspiration from Alien. Going into it I thought that it would be kind of a crappy Alien rip off. While it certainly is sort of a copy of Alien, and by no means is as good, it definitely is one of the best copies of Alien that I’ve seen.
When it comes to Underwater, what you see is what you get. If you expect a movie about a crew trapped at the bottom of the ocean and their struggles to get back to the surface, you’d get exactly that. However, it is a great version of that. If you’re ever in the mood to watch a thriller about isolation, full of tension, go watch Alien, then watch this.