Film: Underwater: Review

     Since I had some extra money to spare and was bored, I decided to pay to watch the film called Underwater after watching its very fascinating preview. The film is about a crew working at an oil drilling installation 7 miles deep on the ocean floor and encountering danger. It seemed to promise a film that was well made. Unfortunately, I  immediately realized that I was wrong.

Below are listed the reasons why I did not find the film entertaining. 

 1. Abrupt Comencement of Action

      Instead of a gradual building up of tension, the film began very quickly with the sudden flooding of the installation, and the main character, a blond female, being shown struggling to survive implosions and inundations. I had watched this part during the preview and had assumed  that it had happened after at least 15 minutes of preliminary preparation familiarizing the viewer with the characters and the situation. After all, otherwise you have a confused disoriented audience being distracted by all the questions flooding their minds. Obviously this distracting effect did not occur to those in charge.

  2.  Abrupt Character Inclusions 

        Instead of providing the viewer with some background information about the characters via informative dialogue, the characters are suddenly inserted into the film without any background at all. In fact, they all remained a mystery until the very end. A black man who seems totally confused about everything there is briefly included and being led aeround by the white female. So as a movie watcher, I really didn't care much when they suddenly died or when they expressed fear.  "Who are these people?"  "What are their responsibilities on that installation?" Were the questions constantly plaguing my mind and I began to regret having purchased the movie. 


  3. Faulty dialogue:   Then there was the defective frustrating dialogue.  Of course as an Engklish speaker I expect to understand a film that uses English. True, these  actors were speaking English, but they constanly whispered and slurred their pronunciation of words in such ways that it very often made them completely unintelligible. No, it was not their accents, but just a very sloppy and careless way of talking. After a frustrating time of struggling to figure out what they were saying, I decided to ignore it altogether and just focus on the action. Then, as the action became more and more ridiculous, I decided to practice my guitar as I watched in order to stay awake.


  4. Useles unbelievable creature behavior.   

      The crew takes a trek across the ocean floor towards another installation in order to access the escape pods. During the initial trek in the dense darkness,  pale creatures are shown playing peekaboo  and grimacing hideously at their supposedly intended victims without attempting to close the distance.


5. Confusing Attacks     

     Of course there are actual attacks. However, these are presented in such a sequentially disorganized and inconsistent way that is exceedingly hard to figure out who is being killed and who is surviving them.

      For example, after one a sudden attack, in which it seemed as if the creatures had left only one survivor, the protagonist finds the female East Asian crew-member just calmly lying on her back on the ocean floor waiting to be rescued while the creatures who had been trying to destroy her moments before just totally ignoring her. Then two other survivors, whom the creatures also inexplicably ignored and who had last been shown under savage attack and screaming, appear as if nothing unusual had happened. This illogical anomaly constantly distracts by forcing the viewer to ponder why.


6. Useless Giant Creature and pals

      Then, as, they calmly and nonchalantly proceed to slowly approach the installation, a huge creature, bigger than the entire structure itself, is shown hovering menacingly above it while making menacing faces and resonant groaning sounds. Yet it allows them to enter. Then the smaller ones begin peering at the crew menacingly through the installation portholes. Yet, they also had allowed the three crewmembes to get inside.  SMH!  Then, as the only two undamaged pods ascend towards the surface and the creatures are detected giving chase, they are easily and unceremoniously obliterated by the nuclear blast from the installation itself which the protagonist who had remained behind sets off.

     Please note that some reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes are not as severe although most agree that the film is indeed a dissapointment.