The fear of the unknown is a concept that has scared us for a very long time. Be it unknown life from another planet, supernatural entities from beyond the grave, or a mutagen that transforms one organism into another; filmmakers, writers, and artists have been creating horrificly-entertaining content. We cannot discount, however, the unknown that lives close to us, to some just a few steps away.
Yes, I still believe the ocean is one of the most terrifying places that we have that we know pretty much nothing about, and Underwater makes it even worse.
A sea-floor drilling station has a catastrophic malfunction nearly seven miles below the surface of the water, and a rag-tag group of survivors from different departments on the platform must band together to survive as their watery home slowly turns into a watery grave. But that’s not the only problem this crew has going for them. strange silhouettes and weird noises surround our group as they soon discover, to their horror, that they are not alone on the ocean floor.
Okay, this movie might as well have had the tagline, “Beneath The Surface, No One Can Hear You Scream” plastered on every poster for it, because in a way, that’s basically what this film is. That being said, is it bad? I’d say no. a few cheap thrills do appear, some twists can be seen coming, and almost every horror movie in the entire world operates on Murphy’s Law (anything that can go wrong, will go wrong), but the atmosphere, cinematography, and overall portrayals of the characters, I believe, makes it better than just a knock-off of Alien attempting to take a bath.
I am a fairly firm believer in “Show, Don’t Tell” when it comes to storytelling, and ramping up fear in a horror film, and while not a marvel of film-making, Underwater is a flawed-yet-fun flick that creates a decent world, scares you with it, and shows that the fear of the unknown is greatest when its close to home.
