Sea Murk

Underwater- 2020 – PG13

I love anything ocean. During my teen years growing up a block from the beach in Santa Cruz, my best friend was the niece of Lloyd Bridges so I spent a fair amount of time hanging out with the Bridges family including Beau and Jeff. I still name drop at any sighting of the Bridges brothers. “Hey, I played tennis with Beau!” “There’s Jeff Bridges! I went to the Boardwalk with him.” Indeed, I was a huge Sea Hunt fan forever dreaming of my own scuba dive escapades—which never happened—turns out I don’t really like swimming in deep waters. So I get to take those daring plunges vicariously through film! But poor, ill-conceived Underwater, a project that sat mercifully on the shelf for three years, makes nary a ripple of watery adventure as it is finally released into the cold doldrum seas of January.

You barely get situated with your popcorn and drink before catastrophe hits research station Kepler 822 operating at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest sea depression in the world, seven miles underwater. A massive earthquake (or maybe marauding sea monsters) rock the station followed by a BA-BOOM explosion leaving slim pickings for the surviving crew, Norah (Kristen Stewart), an engineer who mostly runs around barefoot in skimpy underwear; weepy “we’re all going to die” biologist Emily (Jessica Henwick) and her stand and deliver boyfriend Liam (John Gallagher Jr.) who sadly fails to stand or deliver instead winding up on his back dragged across the ocean floor by now heroic but still weeping Emily; goofball, wisecracking Paul  (T.J. Miller) who for no apparent reason carries a stuffed bunny under his shirt; golly gee whiz Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie), oops, first to lose his head, literally. Sorry no professor and Mary Ann but there is a skipper too, hapless, unfortunate Captain “no one is going to die” Lucien (Vincent Cassel) under whose command almost everyone dies. Of the seven characters that’s pretty much all you need to know. Good thing because that’s all we learn before the “my, what big teeth you have” alien creatures of the deep dine, slime and swallow most of the subterranean six (subtracting long gone headless Rod) as they attempt a deep sea hike to the safety of Roebuck Station, a mile away.

Once I suspended even a modicum of belief, I still had to contend with indecipherable, gurgling dialogue— an oceanic Tower of Babel—plus a scatter gun barrage of terrified, wide-eyed, gaping faces grimacing and gasping behind cracked, clunky deep sea diving helmets. I seriously never knew who was where doing what. The filmmakers didn’t even see fit to provide a clear full frontal of the slimy sea monsters rather substituting a cinematic hide and seek version of “Where’s Waldo?” It was like my head was submerged in a 5 gallon aquarium, the starter kit pump running amok creating a fishbowl whirlpool of swirling sand and floundering, bewildered fish. Or like taking a peripheral vision test at my optometrist’s office where I annually stress over pushing a button every time a light flashes on the screen. Flash! Norah’s eyes. Flash! Emily’s eyes. Or Norah‘s? Flash! A tentacle. Flash! A monster. Or was it the captain? Flash! Flash! Flash! Arggghhhhh!

There was a faint storyline of “we’ve taken too much and now the sea is taking back” environmental politics. But in addition to that one line you had to digest the rest through newspaper clippings shoehorned amongst the ending credits. Flash! Flash! Practice your speed reading. Oh, and lest I forget, revive your childhood Sunday School memories of “Jonah and the Whale” in preparation for perhaps the most ridiculous shot in all of horrible horror films: please give it up for “Norah and the Leviathan.”

I will spare you more details—well, there really isn’t much more to say except [Spoiler Alert] two escape pods float to the surface with a duo of crew members intact. That’s it, no more hints. You too will need to forfeit 95 minutes of your life to discover who survived. Be forewarned. It took me a solid stretch of time in a mental decompression chamber to escape the bad movie bends. Instead of weathering Underwater, you may wish to invest your leisure minutes lobbying Hulu for a Sea Hunt marathon. Now that would be a splash!