Format: DVD from Lena Community District Library on basement television.
Submarine movies are their own particular little subcategory of war films. Most submarine movies have an element of horror to them in the sense that they are almost inherently claustrophobic. So, while “horror” might be a stretch in a lot of cases, at the very least, there’s an element of fear involved in them. That makes a film like Below an interesting proposition, as it is both a war/submarine movie and overtly a horror film. It essentially billed itself as “Poltergiest on a submarine,” and honestly, there’s no way it could live up to that hype, and it frankly doesn’t. There’s a story here, but in large part, this functions like a long episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
In 1943, in the dead middle of World War II, the submarine USS Tiger Shark is patrolling the Atlantic and, due to its position, is ordered to pick up survivors spotted by a British plane. There are three survivors of a British hospital ship recently sunk, and because we need some tension right away, one of the survivors is a woman. The survivors, who have been in the water for a couple of days, are brought on board just as a German destroyer shows up, so we’re going to get a little cat-and-mouse and the sub will take some depth charge damage before escaping. During that attack, the sub gets targeted specifically because a record player starts up out of nowhere. After the encounter, the sub’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Brice (Bruce Greenwood) discovers that one of the rescued people is a German, and he shoots him.
What we learn after this incident, and after the protest of nurse Claire Paige (Olivia Williams) over the death of her patient, is that the Tiger Shark recently sank a German U-boat tender, and afterwards, the previous commander, Lieutenant Commander Winters, died after surfacing to confirm the kill. Brice claims that Winters was attempting to salvage something from the wreck, but the sub hit a submerged object, he lost his balance, and he went overboard and drowned and Brice took over.
Things start happening around the ship that can’t be explained easily. People start hearing voices, for instance. Ensign Odell (Matthew Davis) openly questions the story about Winters’s death, saying that he didn’t feel the sub strike any objects. Lieutenant Coors (Scott Foley) says that the real story is that once topside confirming the kill, Winters ordered a party to start shooting German survivors, something that was objected to by Brice, Coors, and Lieutenant Loomis (Holt McCallany). In the altercation that followed, Winters hit his head and fell overboard. The salvage story was concocted specifically to protect his reputation. There’s a rule of threes, though, and since this is only the second story, you have to know that there’s another one coming in the third act, and almost to confirm this, Coors is soon killed in a strange accident.
The Tiger Shark is plagued by a series of mechanical issues, eventually turning back to the site of the sinking of the U-boat tender, seemingly of its own volition. Crew start dying in a series of accidents, and a crew member known as “Weird Wally” (Zach Galifianakis) believes that the sub is under a curse for some reason and that whatever spirits exist must be appeased, which is what takes us into the third act of the story.
There’s a lot to recommend Below as a concept for a film. As I said at the top, there’s a natural horror element to submarine films. There’s danger everywhere, and while subs themselves were deadly weapons in World War II, they were also particularly fragile and dangerous to be in—no branch of military service suffered more deaths for the U.S. in World War II than sub crews (about 1 in 5 didn’t make it back). For Germany, that number was closer to 70%. That danger and fear combined with the claustrophobia is a natural for horror.
The problem is that Below makes almost no use of this at all in presenting the story of the film. There is no sense of claustrophobia here, no feeling at any time other than the initial confrontation with the German destroyer that they are really even in a sub for the most part. That sense of confinement and being trapped should enhance the horror, but it never really materializes. Most of the scenes that could benefit from this just feel like people below decks on a normal ship.
A potentially larger issue, at least for me, is the fact that Below also doesn’t feel at all like a World War II film. There are ways to make the time far more evident and a part of the story, but there’s none of that here. Encounters with the enemy, which should be at the heart of any film that touches on war, horror or not, are limited and quick. Instead, we spend the entire film dealing entirely with what feels like very random hauntings and unexplained events, most of which don’t really offer a lot in terms of scares. It’s disappointing, because there’s definitely a story here that would take advantage of all of this—it’s just not this story.
Ultimately, Below is a mediocre haunting tale and a disappointing war film. Adding those two things together doesn’t improve it.
Why to watch Below: Submarine movies are inherently nerve-wracking.
Why not to watch: This has as much in common with World War II as I do.