Below (2002)
Directed by David Twohy
In the dark silence of the sea during World War II, the submarine USS Tiger Shark prowls on what should be a routine rescue mission. But for the shell-shocked crew, trapped together in the sub's narrow corridors and constricted spaces, this is about to become a journey into the sensory delusions, mental deceptions and runaway fears that lurk just below the surface of the ocean.
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What critics compared Below to
Writer/director David Twohy ("Below," "Pitch Black") should have quit while he was ahead.
Richard B. Riddick, the outlaw, comes to us from "Pitch Black", a previous collaboration between Vin Diesel and writer-director David Twohy ("Below").
Riddick is just a slapdash conglomeration of set pieces stitched together, and they're all apparently borrowed or inspired by pulpy old science fiction and tweaked just enough to make you think writer (and director, damn him) David Twohy ( Below ) is making fun of us fans, like he's trying to see how ridiculous he can be and still convince us he's serious.
Twohy has made his name as a director with solid low-to-medium budget sci-fi/horror fare like “The Arrival” and “Below”; here, working with his first mega-budget, he seems adrift.
This may sound like an enormous amount of plot (and I haven't even mentioned Thandie Newton and her Lady Macbeth-like machinations to get her boyfriend named leader of the Necromongers) and the usually nimble Twohy (who also directed the effective B movies "The Arrival" and "Below") quickly gets bogged down with all the different characters and worlds that introduces; none of them really stand out and it is almost impossible to tell who are the really bad guys and who are the sorta-bad-but-not that-bad guys.
This ever-sweeping syndrome has even spread to purveyors of solid genre entertainment such as David Twohy, the writer and director of this pseudo sci-fi epic and much better films in the past such as Below and The Arrival .
It’s nothing new for sure, but writer/director David Twohy (who’s displayed a nice touch for genre fare with the submarine thriller “Below” and the psycho-killer thriller “A Perfect Getaway” in addition to the Riddick chronicles), throws in enough entertaining touches to maintain interest — despite an overlong two-hour running time.
Twohy’s best work—from Pitch Black and A Perfect Getaway to the underrated WWII horror movie Below —displays a love for self-contained genre stories, and Riddick is no exception; despite being the third feature in a series that also includes an animated movie and two games, it’s essentially a stand-alone film, a survival story that pits a group of trigger-happy opportunists against a man who refuses to pretend that he’s anything more than an animal.