Underwater (2020) Review

Posted on the 10 February 2020 by Caz @LetsGoToTheMov7

When a disaster strikes on a drilling station that just so happens to be at the bottom of the ocean, the remaining crew must battle to survive and quickly find out that they are not alone on the seabed with oxygen running low.

⭐️

Underwater doesn't really waste a lot of time for the disaster to hit as we are watching Norah all alone getting ready for her day. Miles under the water and working on a drilling station. An explosion and everything appears to be crashing down around her. She must battle to survive and make a choice when to close a door with people not making it. Then attempting to get to escape pods and finding a few other survivors on the way, as well as the Captain which you would think is a good thing. Paul is easily the best and most likeable character who added some much needed humour at times.

I really wanted to like and enjoy this film but it was just lacking so many things for this style for me to even like it a little bit. Considering it has a 95 minute running time, you would think that would be great but I was bored throughout. Just show the creatures a little bit better, I get that you are underwater and it would be very dark but when you can hardly see what's going on I was then lost with the point the film was trying to make.

At times you had to keep reminding yourself that they were under the water and not in space, even though it took that familiar format and basically turned it all upside down. The creatures were very strange which you can easily compare to any type of alien we have seen over the years. It just lacked substance in my opinion and I was left just feeling empty when watching it.

In terms of the characters we didn't really know a massive amount about them, just odd small details given over the course of the film which meant that we didn't really care about the outcome. As harsh as that sounds, when they are battling to survive you have to want to see them win. The tension built up when moving between the different areas was ok, all be it predictable.

Performance wise I have already mentioned that Paul was the best character played by T. J. Miller and he was probably the stand out really. I am still very much on the fence with Kristen Stewart, I do watch her different films but everything still feels very wooden this goes after watching The Runways a few weeks ago. Never seems to be any change of emotion with the change in roles.

Missing the mark for me and that is a little bit of a shame really as had the opportunity to do something a little bit different but then you just forget it isn't a space film even though it follows the same formula and predictable moments.