Underwater

Underwater (2020)

Director: William Eubank. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, Mamoudou Athie

What better film to “inaugurate” the start of a second lockdown than one where people are living in isolation 6 miles under the sea?I remember the trailer looks rather good, so I gave it a go.Well, the start was rather promising and actually quite intriguing: creepy atmosphere… charismatic lead, a mysterious event…Unfortunately after about 20 minutes at the most… it all sunk (pun intended) and became predictable, badly done and actually very boring. There is really not a single original idea in this! I can hear the pitch in Hollywood:- “It’s like Alien meets the Abyss with a bit of the Poseidon adventure”… – “That’s good… And then?” – “Well, that’s it”.Really. That was it! Instantly forgettable and interchangeable characters die one after the other (Vincent Cassel is completely wasted here) while actually very little happens on the screen. Also, a decision was made to film everything in dark murky waters. I don’t know whether that was a stylistic choice or maybe to hide the low budget, but whatever the reason, the result is that I couldn’t really see much. In fairness, “not seen what’s going on” can sometime help to enhance the tension and it can be a pretty effective tool for film-makers… if your name is Ridley Scott, that is.Alas director William Eubank is no Ridley and this is as far away from Alien as you can imagine, despite trying very hard to copy every single thing about it. In the end it’s all very boring and rather predictable. Kristin Stewart, with short bleached hair has a great screen presence and she does her best with the little “material” (if we can call it such) she’s given. She alone manages to lift this up slightly from a complete disaster to a half-watchable B-movie … but really only just.On a positive note: it’s only just over 90 minutes… After this my lockdown looks like a lot more fun.

Available on Sky