Don Reviews "Underwater"
- Don Ford
- Jan 9, 2020
- 2 min read
You may not know this but I am actually a PADI-certified SCUBA diver. I have always enjoyed being in the water, and being underwater has always been an amazing experience for me. However, the world underwater can also be a dangerous place, so it is important to understand the little things that can go wrong, and with the new film “Underwater,” things can go from normal to chaos quickly.
Directed by William Eubank (The Signal), Kristen Stewart stars as a member of a team (along with T.J. Miller, Vincent Cassel, and others) that lives in an underwater drilling facility that sits six miles beneath the surface. When something happens that makes the facility start to fall apart and implode, all seven members of the team try to find a way to get to the other side of their structure to get to escape pods that will carry them to safety. This proves not only to be a problem with the walls around them caving it, but it is worse when they realize what actually caused all of the problems they are fighting.
It is expected that there is a ton of CGI here, but it works very well. This is a truly immersive film that really convinced me that the cast was deep below the surface well. This is also really a vehicle for Stewart (there are only seven people in the entire cast), and she really breaks away from her “Twilight” past with this performance. Miller also contributes to the story nicely with his style of delivery and humor.
Even with its level of suspension of disbelief and extreme level of violence, I still enjoyed this film quite a bit. It feels like a mix of “Alien” and “The Deep,” and it works out that way nicely with some good scares and fun for those into this type of film. I WILL recommend “Underwater” and will do so in a second run-type of theater.