Review | Underwater film review: Kristen Stewart meets primordial predators in shameless Alien/Abyss mash-up
- Underwater takes place six miles under the Pacific Ocean, when an earthquake releases primordial monsters onto a drilling platform
- Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel and the cast have elevated what could have been a fairly standard monster movie
3/5 stars
After Charlie’s Angels bombed spectacularly at the box office, the prospect of another Kristen Stewart-fronted action thriller this soon would give even hardened K-Stew fans that sinking feeling. Yet while Underwater proves little more than a shameless mash-up of Alien and The Abyss, as a submersible drilling platform is besieged by sub-aquatic beasties, its unselfconscious B-movie thrills still manage to hold water.
Sporting a bleached buzz-cut reminiscent of Sharon Stone in the not wholly dissimilar Sphere, Stewart plays Norah, a mechanical engineer aboard a hi-tech research station, located six miles (9.6km) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. When the rig is damaged by a suspected earthquake, Norah and a motley crew of survivors embark on a daring mission across the ocean floor to reach the escape pods and safety.
The crew, including Vincent Cassel’s brooding Captain, T.J. Miller’s wisecracking technician, and Jessica Henwick’s inexperienced research assistant, soon discover that they are not alone beneath the waves. Their drilling has unleashed a ravenous swarm of primordial predators, who proceed to feed upon the least fortunate among them.
Directed by William Eubank (The Signal), from a screenplay by the writers of Insurgent and The Legend of Tarzan, Underwater follows the monster movie playbook religiously. Act one assembles a ragtag group of blue collar heroes and throws them into a perilous situation; act two sees them picked off one by one as they attempt an impossible escape; and finally, in act three, our lone heroine makes a valiant last stand.
