phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2020

Underwater



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 35min
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre Tags: Action, Horror, Sc-Fi
Plot Summary: A crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep sea drilling company try to get to safety after a mysterious earthquake devastates their deepwater research and drilling facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Basically Alien-like survival horror underwater. Better than expected. More movies where Kristen Stewart is a badass, please.


Outside Reviews:

Brian Tallerico
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Underwater is the kind of no-nonsense B-movie with an A-list cast that Hollywood used to make more often. It's a lean and mean film that gets you into its action instantly and then doesn't release the pressure until the ending credits. In an era of increasingly long blockbusters with pretensions of greatness, it's refreshing to see a tight movie that knows exactly what it needs to do and sets about doing it. Anchored by another impressive performance from Kristen Stewart and really effective cinematography from Bojan Bazelli, Underwater absolutely bullies you into liking it. There's no time not to. Some of the midsection succumbs to incoherent effects in which the murky setting overwhelms the ability to actually be able to tell what the heck is going on, but the flaws of the film never linger long enough to, sorry, sink Underwater.


Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Grade: B- - The derivative Alien gloss Underwater comes close to the platonic ideal of a January release

Filmed in the first part of 2017 (which explains the prominent role given to Miller, whose career began to publicly implode later that year) and delayed by Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Underwater feels in stretches like the platonic ideal of a January release - one of those delectably unpretentious and industrious true Hollywood B-movies consigned to the winter dumping ground by a franchise-obsessed, superhero-crazed major studio. But unlike the best programmers, it never transcends its derivative origins and basic thrills. It's another movie about thin characters and bland monsters - albeit one that's better than the norm.