Underwater (2020)

To call this film Alien underwater isn't derivative, it is actually quite succinct. Underwater is a tense, efficient, effective thriller about being trapped with monsters which is simple but fun with a strong cast and a film maker who pulls it off. While it might not be the landmark that Alien was, it is also not a cheap rip off. It is competent and compelling and completely successful in what it is trying to do.

And that appears to be telling a thrilling story in the old morality tale style. It is Icarus or Frankenstein. Human beings push to hard too fast and unleash something they never intended. Then it is a "haunted house" style escape story. Can our little group of stranded misfits make it out in time. One way of looking at this is that the story is cliche, another is that it is classic. For me the test is does is grip me and get me lost in its story? And yes Underwater did.

Underwater is very efficient story telling. The film doesn't waste time setting up its premise and building characters in advance of the action happening. Instead it starts with one brief yet delightfully cryptic scene, one which implies we might not being seeing reality clearly, and then delves right into the adventure. There is a failure, a collapse at an underwater station at the bottom of the ocean. It appears only a handful of the crew has survived but to continue to survive they must achieve A, B, and C and soon we discover there "is something out there." Yes we've all seen this before in different variations. My argument is Underwater knocks this idea out of the park.

Anchored by the increasingly remarkable Kristen Stewart and a supporting case (see below) of character actors I mostly enjoy (even T.J. Miller remains rather restrained) Underwater wins by keeping it simple stupid (but never stupidly simple), never getting off track, walking a good line between the fantastic (it is sci fi after all) and the implausible, and just telling a frickin good adventure story.

By the end I began to see Underwater wouldn't explore any of the are-we-seeing-what-we-think-we're-seeing plays with reality I thought might be in store based on the opening scene, that the characters woudln't be more than stock expendable crew only a couple of which make it to the end. While it would advance a simple corporations-make-evil-choices moral to the story it woudn't get into anything deeper than that. But that was all fine. It entertained me for 95 minutes and didn't insult my intelligence.

I'm good with that.

Underwater
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, T.J. Miller, Jessica Henwick, John Gallagher Jr., Mamoudou Athie
Director: William Eubank
Writers: Brian Duffield, Adam Cozad