Missed Opportunities: Underwater (2020)
Had all the telltales of a deep sea thriller/horror, but it ended up being supremely uninteresting and tired. Not necessarily a let down because my expectations weren’t high, but not an impressive movie.
I will start with the parts I was pleasantly surprised by, and the parts the piqued my interest: first, I thought the semi-futuristic utilitarian vibe of the undersea drilling rig was well done. We get so much exploration of what the near-future late-stage-capitalist space infrastructure will look like, so this was the right styling for me. The film was delightfully washed-out and white-dark, and felt so reminiscent of how space colonies are imagined. Space is the final frontier but the ocean is just as unexplored, or something like that.
The other excellent part of this film was it’s decidedly Lovecraftian feel. From the view inside Captain Lucien’s locker above to of course, the big Suriname Toad-like monster with little ones swimming out of its skin. The highlight for me is Emily’s quote: “We went too far, we’re not supposed to be here.” Tian Industries (fun to make the evil capitalists Chinese, and fun that no matter which meaning of ‘tian’ it is, heaven, day, or sky, it is supremely ironic in a movie about the occult demons of the deep sea) is pushing nature to the brink, and faces Cthulhu’s wrath when nature pushes back. That part of the entire story is great, when the movie asks, albeit very briefly and wholly unsatisfactorily, what happens when profit motive gets the better of us.
Otherwise, Underwater (2020) really could not decide what type of film it wanted to be and what the point was. There’s the comic relief character that jokes about his situation being like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and almost breaks the fourth wall complaining about the strange circumstances. Then the baby-version of the baby Cthulhus feels something like the facehuggers out of Alien (1979). Then there’s the Lovecraft style occult section of the story, and then there’s the disaster movie thriller part. And of course, Kristen Stewart is so obviously ready to sacrifice herself throughout the story: she has lost track of her life and time, she laments the love she has lost, and she is willing to sacrifice herself for her crewmates. There was no single thesis to this film, and all the points it tries to make are worse off as a result. The worst possible thing for any thriller film, very little about the plot was thrilling. Obviously there were a couple scary instances where spooky monsters show up in the dark deep water and the implosion scenes are gory and gross in a delightfully sci-fi way, but never was I thrilled at a plot development. It was predictable in its arcs of tension and predictable in the premise.
The characters are kind of bad, too. Emily is the stereotypical Asian or maybe half-Asian love interest for a white guy, you have the esoteric and charismatic French captain, and some gross white dudes wearing torn up boxer briefs. Then there’s Kristen Stewart playing a woman of few words and a lot of stress.
Overall the film felt lackluster. It really missed out on an opportunity to make something of the repeated motif of groping around in the dark and the deep, humanity with no clue where it is and whether its day or night — to really explore the liminality between the waking and dreams, and to turn this film into a real psychological thriller about the deep sea, a topic that evokes so much dread already. I would’ve loved to be thrilled by some philosophical take on Lovecraft and his fears a century later, but instead it passed itself off as just another jump-scare type thriller.
“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
-Lovecraft, The Call of the Cthulhu
