Film review: Underwater (2020)

This one often comes up in lists of "surprisingly good" monster movies that died at the box office.  I'm okay with surprisingly good!  And having seen it, I agree!  What's good about it is the world-building and effects.  As the mindnumbingly generic title reveals, it takes place about 6 miles underwater (in the Mariana Trench) where some kind of drilling is taking place.  And you really believe that you're in a base on the bottom of the sea.  It's also often compared with Alien - and you can see why

(it's far from the first film to try "Alien, but in the sea") and it shares with that film a realistically run-down and used look to all the tech, albeit lacking the pervy originality that H.R. Giger brought to the art direction.  The film also doesn't mess around, which is part of why we watched it: our number one criterion for film-watching these days is "how long is it?" and this hit the sweet spot at 90 minutes.  And the reason it's not more sprawling is that it just hits the ground running.  You get about a minute of watching Kristen Stewart brushing her teeth 

before a massive shock breaches the part of the base she's on and we're off and (literally) running.  However, this strength is also a weakness, because one of the things that makes Alien so special is the slow build, so that you get to know the characters and their routines before everything is destroyed.  Without that it's very hard to care about the characters.  They are reduced to archetypes (the comic relief (pre-cancelling T.J. Miller, 

who pretty much had a lock on that character for the window in which this film was produced), panicky civilian ("Emily" (Jessica Henwick), 

playing the role that Veronica Cartwright played in Alien (although, unlike Cartwright, she doesn't attempt an American accent), although thankfully a bit more whimper-y than scream-y), doomed captain (French actor Vincent Cassell), 

nerdy black guy, and generic white guy (wearing a headband, like Yaphet Kotto in Alien, as Jami pointed out)) and given sketchy but intentionally tear-jerky backstories to be dropped in in gaps between the action.  So that's one of the flaws in this film.  The other is that, while the monsters are actually kind of interesting and well-rendered, they're lacking any real sense that they're malevolent predators, and the whole thing actually feels much more like a disaster movie (every part of the base seems to be falling apart prompting them to have to move, often through horribly claustrophobic spaces to get to the next part of the base, until they have to walk across the bottom of the ocean in their armored suits (which would really have to be armored given the depth they're at, 

and actually do seem to resist the attacks of the monsters, given that our heroine literally gets swallowed by one at one point, allowing her to blow her way out with a flare gun).  There is a big bad which (spoiler) is, according to the director, meant to be Lovecraft's Chthulu, but it doesn't get much time to shine before the film canters to a close.  The acting is good (given what they have to work with), and the order in which the characters die did surprise me, so they know the tropes enough to buck them.  I'd say it would be most appreciated by a teen new to horror films: no attempt at sexiness (you occasionally see skinny young women running about in underwear, 

but it's very matter of fact and at moments where they could die at any moment, so it's not played as sexy) to scare off the Young Prudes, but also not too gruesome.  PG-13 seems about the right rating.  But they should give a real script to the people responsible for bringing the world to life, because they do a very good job.  Watch it in  a darkened room with somebody who's claustrophobic and scared of diving.