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5 years ago, this sci-fi Alien ripoff drowned at the box office. Is it worthy of reappraisal?
2020's Underwater was meant to be an homage to sci-fi horror films like Alien, but it didn't quite succeed. What happened, and is it any better five years later?
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Table of ContentsTable of ContentsWhy Underwater is a Cthulhu-sized disasterUnderwater is hard to watch (literally)Despite its various flaws, Underwater has lots of promise as wellCthulhu is the highlight of the movieIs Underwater still worth watching?
Five years ago in January 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic started to make its first headlines, a different kind of disaster arrived in movie theaters: Underwater. The movie starred Kristen Stewart, and based on the trailers, it looked to pay homage to older sci-fi horror classics. Yet Underwater turned out to be a super clunky, visually murky, and ill-paced film about a deep-sea mining station at the bottom of the Mariana Trench that inadvertently wakes up a giant deep-sea monster.
In theory, Underwater should have been enjoyable. Even if it added nothing to the genre and was just a poor homage to Alien, Cloverfield, and The Abyss, it should have been at least derivative fun. But it wasn’t, and audiences stayed away from the big-budget film. So what went wrong, and is Underwater worth watching five years later now that it’s available to stream at home?
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Why Underwater is a Cthulhu-sized disasterUnderwater | Official Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX
Like many terrible films, Underwater’s problems started long before it hit theaters. Trust me, it won’t take an eagle-eyed viewer to notice that something about Underwater’s editing is off, as if half the movie were simply deleted. For starters, the film begins with the action already in progress. It starts with a catastrophic quake that begins to flood the underwater station. This isn’t necessarily a problem, since lots of stories do the “jump into the action and explain the backstory as you go” thing. The problem is that Underwater doesn’t even bother to do that.
There’s very little backstory to any of the characters (and therefore little reason to care about them), and there are lots of scenes that feel like they were connected to moments that probably happened earlier but were cut. Despite being a feature-length film, Underwater somehow manages to feel completely plotless.
20th Century FoxAdding to the madness is the fact that Underwater only has five characters throughout the entire movie. Imagine being in a giant underwater mining and research station the size of a small city and never seeing anyone else there. And remember, the movie starts the very moment all hell breaks loose.
It’s not like we’re following some salvage crew exploring a lost mining station. It becomes very clear very quickly that something happened with the movie’s production because despite looking like a giant blockbuster, Underwater feels insanely hollow.
Underwater is hard to watch (literally)UniversalI’m not the only one who noticed Underwater‘s various problems either. In 2020 Vulture reported: “The film was shot in 2017, and reports from the time suggest that it was supposed to be about some underwater scientists, though I have no real idea if that’s just poor reporting or evidence of rewrites and/or reshoots.” So we know for sure the film sat in development hell for three years before hitting theaters.
The Guardian also noticed Underwater’s choppy editing and lifeless plot, and wondered if it was to keep the film’s PG-13 rating. “When the crew members inevitably start getting picked off,” the publication states, “their death scenes, because of the film’s mass-audience-pleasing PG-13 rating, are largely incoherent. At one point a character has to remind someone, and us, that a death actually did just occur.”
20th Century FoxOn top of the sloppy editing, there’s also the compounding issue that Underwater is visually disorienting. Having a rushed movie is bad enough, but it’s even worse when it’s all happening at the bottom of the ocean in scenes so dark and fuzzy you can hardly tell what’s going on. In its hilarious one-star review, The Irish Times titled its article “Underwater: Nothing to see here – literally – in this murky appalling mess” — and that’s a great way to sum up the movie. It doesn’t just have a murky plot, the entire film is actually, literally murky.
In fact, Underwater is so dark and murky that I struggled to find images of the movie’s creatures for this article. Every time I looked for images online, the clear ones were actually pre-production renderings of the CGI, not stills from the film. And when I paused the movie to get a good screenshot, everything was a grainy blur. I had to run the above image through Canva to brighten it, clarify it, and sharpen its edges just to make sure readers could actually see it (somewhat) clearly.
Despite its various flaws, Underwater has lots of promise as well20th Century FoxWhat makes the movie so insufferable is that it was so close to being good. With its 95-minute runtime, Underwater is a very tight film that easily could have added (or simply not cut) another 20 minutes. And just imagine what those 20 minutes could have done! With a some backstory, more suspense, and a better use of its unique setting, Underwater could have been an absolute banger of a horror sci-fi movie.
At times, watching it felt almost painful because there were numerous scenes where I could tell that with just a little bit more thought and effort, it could have been really effective. But it wasn’t, and instead, every scene just feels like lost potential that could have led to something so much better. But that potential is still there, giving Underwater this odd sense of hope that tricks you into thinking it’s about to get really good, and that surely just around the next corner the film will find its footing.
Cthulhu is the highlight of the movie20th Century FoxThe film does in fact finally find its footing; unfortunately, it’s not until the last 15 minutes. Mild spoiler alert: At the very end of the movie, Kristin Stewart finally sees the giant 50-story Cthulhu monster rise up from the depths (even though they’re at the very bottom of the Mariana Trench, so lord only knows what “depths” it’s rising from since they’re already at the very bottom of the deepest spot in the ocean).
In a film full of bleh and meh, the scene where we finally glimpse the giant monster is absolutely everything you’d want. It’s massive, intimidating, and terrifying. Up until the finale, all audiences see are the smaller, human-sized monsters, which are nowhere near as scary. In fact, I’d argue that Underwater isn’t scary at all. Because of how rushed everything is and how blatantly CGI’d the mini-monsters are, there’s no sense of suspense or terror until you finally see Cthulhu. That’s the moment where I was like, “Ah, so this is what the movie should have been the whole time.”
Is Underwater still worth watching?UNDERWATER (2020) | Behind the Scenes of Kristen Stewart Thriller Movie
Is Underwater worth watching? That really depends on what type of viewer you are. If you’re a genre fan like me who thinks we don’t get enough monster movies, then yes you should watch Underwater since it’s now part of monster movie history. It’s a sloppy movie, but there’s still lots of potential to find enjoyable. Plus, it’s loaded with nods and homages to other classics — like the underwater station that totally brings back flashes of Deep Blue Sea, or their aquanaut suits that look straight out of StarCraft, and of course the endless homages to Alien throughout.
But if you’re a casual viewer who isn’t super into sci-fi horror or monster movies, I recommend you don’t waste your time. Underwater certainly isn’t a movie that provides a meaningful plot or intriguing characters. It’s a movie for people who want to see Cthulhu underwater.
If you do choose to watch Underwater, just remember that five years after its release, it hasn’t become a cult classic for a reason — there’s nothing classic about it. But if you love creature features and have nothing else to watch, then what do you have to lose?
Underwater is streaming on Hulu.
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