#eubank

Underwater was directed by William Eubank and was written by Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad. The film stars Kristen Stewart, T. J. Miller, Vincent Cassel and Jessica Henwick. A crew of researchers who are taking on the world underneath our oceans tries to get to safety after an earthquake hits their ship and threatens to keep them underwater.

I went into this movie telling my friend this was either going to be the cheesiest movie we saw of 2020 or that we would LOVE this movie. The latter happened. I wouldn’t say this is now one of my favorite movies but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn’t see half of what was coming, coming. I had assumed we were going to get a story of a group of people trying to not get kept underwater but then got a monster movie. Yes, I realize most of the previews that are out show the monsters but I am someone who goes into most movies not having seen a single preview. The only time I allow myself to watch previews is before movies I’m seeing in theaters! Therefore I had not seen a preview for this one.

About 20 minutes into the film I realized what I also really liked about this film. Normally "scary” films like this take place in outter space. Because that is such an expansive place and it’s so far from earth. We barely know anything about what is orbiting outside of our planet so it’s scary. But having watched this I realized, THE OCEAN IS SCARY TOO. I personally never think about this because, well, if I’m at the beach enjoying the ocean I don’t want to think about how far the bottom of the ocean is actually from me. We don’t know what is beneath us, we don’t know what could happen under there. And if you’re going down and you get trapped....well you’re screwed. And so from 20 minutes in I was having a mini-panic attack thinking about what these characters were going through and how I’d react if I were them.

T.J. Miller was definitely the comic relief in this film, but I felt like his comic relief was too much. Half of the time I didn’t want a funny joke about what was happening, I just wanted story. And this was when his character would spout an off the wall remark meant to make people laugh. They never really hit home, not with anyone in the theater I was in at least.

And last but not least. Kristen Stewart. I’m so glad that she’s coming back, and that she got to play the role of a badass woman who is underwater fighting a badass monster. She is this years Sigourney Weaver fighting her own kind of alien. And this film did all the story tropes in such a different way, in only a way Kristen Stewart could portray it. Without giving spoilers I think the ending was perfect, it’s how you would hope a character who has been as strong as Kristen’s would go out.