William Eubank
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It’s easy to compare Underwater to other underwater based films such as The Abyss (you’re better than any Alien comparisons though), but the film’s use of tight spaces and bad writing is reminiscent of Sanctum while the monsters seem to be inspired by Cloverfield .
That's basically it in the stripped-down plot from scribes Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad who borrow heavily from the "Alien/Aliens" playbook, rip off a lot from "The Abyss" and have everything play out in the same arena as any number of other deep-sea monster movies.
By the third time that happens, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the movie is being guided along rails like a theme park ride; while the story evokes everything from “Alien” and “The Abyss” to “Sphere” and “The Descent,” the raw functionality of its telling ultimately positions “Underwater” closer to Disneyland’s “Tower of Terror” than anything else (and thanks to Disney’s recent acquisition of 20th Century Fox, this is technically a Disney joint).
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Alien , Aliens , The Abyss , Leviathan , The Meg , Godzilla (2014), The Thing , Gravity , shaky-cam found-footage stuff like Cloverfield , not Citizen Kane .
There are moments here that are clearly lifted from two much better films—Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s The Abyss.
While I haven’t seen Leviathan or The Abyss to compare directly, I am confident in saying that Underwater is a solid effort in this horror premise.
Though it pays “creative homage” to a number of films (the opening credits sequence is practically lifted from the 2014 version of Godzilla ), it owes its biggest debts to Alien , Aliens , and the collected works of Paul W.S. Anderson, the sci-fi deathtrap B-movie maestro behind Event Horizon and the Resident Evil films .
There’s no doubt that Kristen Stewart has been styled to evoke Weaver as Ripley in Underwater , to the point of collapsing the character’s various incarnations into one package: She’s got close-cropped hair (shades of Alien 3 ), carries a big gun (á la Aliens ), and spends a significant amount of time running around in her underwear (as in the climax of Alien ), all while projecting the same terse toughness as her inspiration.
There’s a scene where the crew is crawling through a tight space in the lab wreckage that evokes the claustrophobic panic of The Descent , and the slow reveal of the final water monster baddie is spookily reminiscent of the Queen reveal in Aliens .
In addition, the alien design borrows from earlier films like Alien (from which director William Eubank has also cribbed the interiors), Aliens and A Quiet Place , to name just three.
Similarly, the sense of claustrophobia director William Eubank accomplishes in early sequences is neatly taut, and several of the reveals of the underwater monsters are quite eerie and, wouldn’t you know it, reminiscent of the Queen from the superior Aliens .
There's a wise-cracking crew member, played by T.J. Miller, who's clearly a descendant of the whiny marine played by Bill Paxton ( "Game over, man!" ) in Aliens .
Though it pays “creative homage” to a number of films (the opening credits sequence is practically lifted from the 2014 version of Godzilla ), it owes its biggest debts to Alien , Aliens , and the collected works of Paul W.S. Anderson, the sci-fi deathtrap B-movie maestro behind Event Horizon and the Resident Evil films .
Too many films have drawn inspiration from 1979’s Alien over the years, including countless C-list rip-offs not worth mentioning.
Following up on his 2014 brainteaser The Signal , William Eubank's Underwater lets viewers know what they're in for from the start: If its title treatment's faint echo of Alien doesn't tip you off (with letters materializing onscreen out of order against a ghostly expanse), a credits sequence heavy on newspaper-headline exposition may remind you of recent Godzilla reboots, in which humanity's hubris awakened terrible creatures from the deep.
There’s no doubt that Kristen Stewart has been styled to evoke Weaver as Ripley in Underwater , to the point of collapsing the character’s various incarnations into one package: She’s got close-cropped hair (shades of Alien 3 ), carries a big gun (á la Aliens ), and spends a significant amount of time running around in her underwear (as in the climax of Alien ), all while projecting the same terse toughness as her inspiration.
While my initial impression was a combination of Aquaman’s The Trench and Alien, and yes, there are some nods to the latter franchise, Underwater brings so much more to the table.
There’s a scene where the crew is crawling through a tight space in the lab wreckage that evokes the claustrophobic panic of The Descent , and the slow reveal of the final water monster baddie is spookily reminiscent of the Queen reveal in Aliens .
By the third time that happens, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the movie is being guided along rails like a theme park ride; while the story evokes everything from “Alien” and “The Abyss” to “Sphere” and “The Descent,” the raw functionality of its telling ultimately positions “Underwater” closer to Disneyland’s “Tower of Terror” than anything else (and thanks to Disney’s recent acquisition of 20th Century Fox, this is technically a Disney joint).
Struggling through wreckage in scenes that recall Neil Marshall’s The Descent , she eventually winds up in the company of a group of comfortingly familiar survivors, including: grim Captain Lucien (French star Vincent Cassel); panicky biologist Emily Haversham (Jessica Henwick); nice nerd Liam Smith (John Gallagher Jr.); snarky grunt Paul Abel (snarky T.J. Miller); and the unfortunately one-dimensional Rodrigo Nagenda (Mamoudou Athie).
Taking cues from films like Alien, Cloverfield, The Descent and Leviathan, among others, Underwater would have easily drowned if it hadn’t borrowed some of the best elements from the aquatic horror movies it hoped to emulate.
Normally, obscuring special effects and not allowing full sight of a monster would infuriate me, but it works here, much in the same way it did with the cave dwellers in The Descent.
Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened and the result is a slice of aquatic ALIEN-sploitation (that also borrows from PITCH BLACK and THE DESCENT) with some cool stuff but is mostly frustrating and unmemorable.
Though it pays “creative homage” to a number of films (the opening credits sequence is practically lifted from the 2014 version of Godzilla ), it owes its biggest debts to Alien , Aliens , and the collected works of Paul W.S. Anderson, the sci-fi deathtrap B-movie maestro behind Event Horizon and the Resident Evil films .
As you’ve probably guessed, “Underwater” is something of an assemblage of spare parts: “Alien” most obviously, though you’ll also hear echoes of “Event Horizon” and your choice of titles from the 1989 undersea horror derby (“Deep Star Six,” “Leviathan,” “Lords of the Deep,” etc.)
Thrills abound as a one-in-a-million plan of survival gets underway, borrowing from other undersea adventures like “The Abyss,” “Black Sea,” and “Sanctum,” all while the mystery of a final transmission from the drilling team poses concerns of a supernatural kind (not unlike “Event Horizon”).
The premise recalls the late-’80s deep-sea creature features Leviathan and DeepStar Six , but the comparison is unfair; Underwater is both more consistent and more atmospheric than either of those movies, making the most of Bojan Bazelli’s grungy, gothic lighting and the dingy walls and flickering screens of Naaman Marshall’s industrial production design.
Think Leviathan (1989), DeepStar Six (1989), The Abyss (1989), and probably some films that didn’t come out in 1989 too.
However, back in 1989, there was a boom of such deep sea terror, as films like Leviathan and DeepStar Six aimed to capitalise on the upcoming release of James Cameron’s The Abyss and in turn they became known from this point on as aquatic horrors.
1989 saw the release of THE ABYSS, DEEPSTAR SIX, and LEVIATHAN—with THE RIFT (aka ENDLESS DESCENT) coming out in 1990—and all featured an isolated crew in the unforgiving depths of the ocean encountering creatures and various personnel disasters.
There are a few breathtaking shots that not only justify Underwater ’s existence but also the idea of seeing it in a theater, because otherwise there’s not much separating it from straight-to-Netflix dreck like The Cloverfield Paradox , or the cycle of Alien- but-underwater movies that proliferated at the end of the 1980s ( DeepStar Six and Leviathan , both of which are more fun than you remember).
Though it pays “creative homage” to a number of films (the opening credits sequence is practically lifted from the 2014 version of Godzilla ), it owes its biggest debts to Alien , Aliens , and the collected works of Paul W.S. Anderson, the sci-fi deathtrap B-movie maestro behind Event Horizon and the Resident Evil films .
Following up on his 2014 brainteaser The Signal , William Eubank's Underwater lets viewers know what they're in for from the start: If its title treatment's faint echo of Alien doesn't tip you off (with letters materializing onscreen out of order against a ghostly expanse), a credits sequence heavy on newspaper-headline exposition may remind you of recent Godzilla reboots, in which humanity's hubris awakened terrible creatures from the deep.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Alien , Aliens , The Abyss , Leviathan , The Meg , Godzilla (2014), The Thing , Gravity , shaky-cam found-footage stuff like Cloverfield , not Citizen Kane .
The film opens with a 2014 Godzilla -esque title credits sequence which also gives us 87% of the film’s exposition about a drill site 5 miles down in the ocean and introduces us to the Tian Corporation behind it all.
As you’ve probably guessed, “Underwater” is something of an assemblage of spare parts: “Alien” most obviously, though you’ll also hear echoes of “Event Horizon” and your choice of titles from the 1989 undersea horror derby (“Deep Star Six,” “Leviathan,” “Lords of the Deep,” etc.)
Think Leviathan (1989), DeepStar Six (1989), The Abyss (1989), and probably some films that didn’t come out in 1989 too.
1989 saw the release of THE ABYSS, DEEPSTAR SIX, and LEVIATHAN—with THE RIFT (aka ENDLESS DESCENT) coming out in 1990—and all featured an isolated crew in the unforgiving depths of the ocean encountering creatures and various personnel disasters.
Viewers expecting something along the lines of James Cameron’s The Abyss should probably recalibrate their expectations more along the lines of George P. Cosmatos’ 1989 thriller Leviathan .
The overwhelmingly murky visuals courtesy of cinematographer Bojan Bazelli ( 6 Underground , A Cure For Wellness ) combine with the effective sound design, giving the ocean depths a suitably otherworldly vibe, adding to the occasional musings on how humanity may have dug too deep and awoken something dangerous.
The cinematographer behind “A Cure for Wellness” and “The Ring” knows how to build tension with a combination of extreme close-ups that put us inside Norah’s helmet while never losing the geography of where these people are fighting against incredible odds.
The effects and production design work to create a believable world, and then Eubanks and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli ( A Cure for Wellness , 2016) enthusiastically tear it all down around their cast.
Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli has proven he can shoot beautifully macabre images with his work on Gore Verbinski films like The Ring and A Cure for Wellness .
Instead the immersive quality of “Underwater” is owed to cinematographer Bojan Bazelli, who has lent a baroque eye to genre films like “The Ring” and “A Cure for Wellness.”
At its best, “Underwater” is quite literally in its element: In the able hands of cinematographer Bojan Bazelli (whose flair for eerie aquatic imagery was also on display in “A Cure for Wellness”), the characters’ limited visibility and mobility become our sources of terror as well as theirs.
There is a precedent for this kind of character (consider Kevin J. O’Connor’s role as the plucky sidekick in Deep Rising ), but Underwater is not a tongue-in-cheek film.
Underwater harkens back to such movies as Alien, The Abyss and Deep Rising, and it made me think fondly back to those titles.
On a scale of The Rift to DeepStar Six to Leviathan to The Abyss , I’d say Underwater is more like an Alien -infused Deep Rising more than it is anything else.
Yet the intermittent sequences of alien-like interference plague the otherwise sensible scares (and the abundance of swift jump scares); nothing works against the engaging costume designs, the low visibility and flashing warning lights, and the menace of looming death like unconvincing monsters (wandering down the path of films like “Leviathan,” “Deep Rising,” and “DeepStar Six”).
Mix into this some The Poseidon Adventure (1972) reminiscences and maybe even Jacques Tourneur’s late period Vincent Price schlock War-Gods of the Deep (1965) and this sometimes-competent underwater creature feature doesn’t appear to have an original concept or idea lurking anywhere in its superficial recesses.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Directed by John Krasinski
influenced Underwater (2020)
Themes Visuals Characters Plot Music
Humans being hunted by a creature of unknown or terrifying origin has been one of Hollywood’s most successful, and well-traversed, genres since the birth of cinema, going all the way back to the Universal classics of The Wolf Man and Dracula and seeing various evolutions over the years, from Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking Alien to 2018’s critical darling A Quiet Place.
In addition, the alien design borrows from earlier films like Alien (from which director William Eubank has also cribbed the interiors), Aliens and A Quiet Place , to name just three.
I like this monster about as much as the one Emily Blunt dealt with in “A Quiet Place.”
They have the look of aquatic cousins of the alien invaders of “A Quiet Place.”
Director William Eubank does a serviceable job painting by numbers, but each number invites comparisons with another film that did the same thing better – such as “The Descent” or the more recent “A Quiet Place.”
The score by Marco Beltrami ( Ford v Ferrari , A Quiet Place ) and Brandon Roberts ( Logan , World War Z ) is solid and adds an extra element of tension to an already hectic situation.
A cheap, thrilling B movie — in the vein of Pitch Black , Slither or Ready Or Not — is a welcome sight amongst awards-season seriousness.
Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened and the result is a slice of aquatic ALIEN-sploitation (that also borrows from PITCH BLACK and THE DESCENT) with some cool stuff but is mostly frustrating and unmemorable.
Writers Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad owe much thanks to extraterrestrial influencers from the aforementioned The Sphere to Pitch Black , but their seabed storytelling suffers not from copycat syndrome.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: With Next of Kin , the Paranormal Activity series gets seriously Midsommar ‘d!
Setting the film in such a technologically devoid backdrop is an intriguing premise, and capturing the lives of the cloistered community with its archaic rituals certainly lends a particular Midsommar vibe to the proceedings.
The Amish congregation definitely gives off Midsommar vibes, and there is even one point toward the end where chaos has descended on the farm…and it literally resembles the farm zombies level in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. There were tons of these little similarities throughout the film, so much so that it began to feel like the movie was trying to scratch as many itches as possible.
In conjuring its image of life on this farm, “Next of Kin” plays off several other movies — “Witness,” for one, but also two films that aren’t about the Amish: M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” (which I think is the last really good M. Night Shyamalan film) and “Midsommar,” Ari Aster’s epic nightmare set in a pastoral cult community in Sweden.
Perhaps Eubank is attempting to tap into the othering that’s seen in folk horror films like The Witch or Midsommar.
Likewise, the point-of-view sequences in the exterior scenes — in which the crew trudges through undersea dunes, fumbling for a visible path — evoke video games like BioShock as strongly as they echo Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, even as they court monotony at times with their limited palette of aggressively murky textures.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Alien , Aliens , The Abyss , Leviathan , The Meg , Godzilla (2014), The Thing , Gravity , shaky-cam found-footage stuff like Cloverfield , not Citizen Kane .
To be sure, she is by far the best thing about the entire enterprise—her undeniable screen charisma and presence is in full effect even when she is mostly hidden away inside of a clunky diving suit (and leave it to her to honor the most controversial film in the “Alien” franchise, “Alien 3” with a buzzcut that explicitly evokes Sigourney Weaver’s Falconetti look )—but aside from the lure of a presumably higher paycheck than she might expect from an Olivier Assayas joint, there is nothing to this part that either takes advantage of her considerable talents or allows her to stretch performance muscles that she rarely gets a chance to deploy.
Speaking of which, here’s Kristen Stewart’s Norah, based on the blueprint of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley: She’s got a buzz cut (“Alien 3”), runs around frenetically, doing action-movie stuff in her skivvies (“Alien”), and packs a big (flare gun) weapon (“Aliens”).
Director William Eubank has an eye for composition and a distinct sensibility, albeit one that borrows heavily from superior filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and Duncan Jones, whose Moon was a much more inspired take on 1970s science-fiction ideas.
That’s what I meant about irritation; an irritation I didn’t feel about, say, Duncan Jones ’ maybe equally tricky " Moon ."
The Signal, like its brethren (which include, but are not limited to, Moon and Under the Skin ), prizes ideas over special effects.
And the final form of the menacing sea creature is in its way as laughable as the carpet monster in the 1964 cinematic mishap “The Creeping Terror.”
Underwater evokes its predecessors with nods to the set design, narrative, and creature work of other films such as Leviathan , Deep Blue Sea , and, most notably, the Alien franchise.
Though it pays “creative homage” to a number of films (the opening credits sequence is practically lifted from the 2014 version of Godzilla ), it owes its biggest debts to Alien , Aliens , and the collected works of Paul W.S. Anderson, the sci-fi deathtrap B-movie maestro behind Event Horizon and the Resident Evil films .