The Quarantine Stream: ‘Underwater’ May Be Derivative, But It Sure Is Fun
By Chris Evangelista/Jan. 6, 2021 7:00 am EST
The movie release landscape is a bit of a mess right now, but back in the old days, whenever a studio lacked faith in a film, they would dump it into theaters in January. As a result, multiplexes became wastelands at the start of the year, with studios pushing out their leftover titles – the type of titles doomed to fail, financially. But that doesn’t mean the movies that arrive in January are bad. It just means they’re not for everyone.
The film was shot and completed in 2017. And then…it just sat around. Until it finally arrived in January 2020, where it received mixed reviews and poor box office numbers ($40.9 million worldwide). But gosh darn it, Underwater deserves better! It’s gorgeous to look at; the scares are effective; and it moves, baby! There’s no wasted time on bullshit here – after a super quick set-up that establishes main character Norah Price (Kristen Stewart) as a bit of a melancholy loner, Underwater gets right to the point and starts blowing shit up.
Norah works on a research and drilling facility at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and as the film begins, some sort of event – an earthquake, perhaps – calls the facility to start collapsing. In the first few minutes, we have to watch Norah scramble to get to safety while also having to make the difficult decision to close some airlock doors – a move that dooms some of her coworkers to death. It’s not Norah’s fault – she had no choice; either she shut the doors or the entire structure would implode. But it doesn’t make it any easier.
Soon Norah hooks up with some other survivors, and they hatch a plan to get to safety. That plan involves taking an underwater elevator down even further and then walking across the ocean floor. But the destruction of the facility is the least of their problems because it seems all the deep-sea drilling has unleashed a swarm of slimy Lovecraftian monsters.
