I haven’t reviewed a movie for this site in well over a year, and honestly the combination of not being able to willingly watch awful movies to make jokes about combined with the fact I’ve seen a ton of good movies lately made me even lazier than usual. (Which is about one step above comatose, anyway. Plus, good movies aren’t fun to write about.) Well, about half way through this one I felt the bile rising to “write things down” proportions.
I went into this having forgotten to even watch the trailer, so I was totally blind to what it was about outside of it must take place underwater (they did achieve this) and that it was a horror film (the terror was more my time being murdered.) In true Lazy Film Critic fashion, I can not remember any single character’s name. We start fairly quickly with Kristen Stewart’s character doing a voice over (Never a good sign when a movie starts with a voice over. Unless you’re, like, Martin Scorsese.) about life under the sea. Before Kristen can finish her pointless, not germane to the plot monologue the underwater apparatus she is in gets attacked. She starts running, and…well, whatever she’s in is too big to be a submarine. Water is crashing in, which is not good when you live underwater. While scurrying away she and her friend Token Black Horror Movie Character (who appeared out of nowhere) are able to make it to safety by closing some heavy duty doors separating them from the compromised area. Of course the doors are jammed, and she has to do some hacking to get them to close JUST IN TIME.
After a slight jostle, they come to, and through means I can’t recall are able to get out of the room even though water just destroyed everything. Things are in ruins, but somehow (and against all odds or reason) the data center is totally water free, and she once again hacks the Gibson to find a route to where escape pods are located. This is one of the hallmarks of the movie. Computer tech from the near future with features no one would ever program that luckily is in place so the characters can find their way around. I’m pretty sure they said she was a mechanic of some sort or maybe mechanical engineer. So, I’m not sure how she’s magically able to get into every system without entering a single password. As they crawl their way around, they find Comic Relief Guy somehow unscathed under some rubble. He cracks wise, they shimmy past some dead bodies, and find the captain, Guy from Brotherhood of the Wolf with the Chain Link Sword! (Man, remember that movie?)
Things are dire. They are on a nuclear powered underwater drill over 6 miles into the ocean. The whole thing is compromised, and they need to escape. Here is where we meet the rest of the crew: Asian Scared Young Woman and Guy Who Does Nothing and Should Be Ditched so Everyone Else Can Escape. (His name rolls right off the tongue.) Brotherhood of the Wolf comes up with a plan that involves taking an elevator to the ocean floor, and then walking to another building that has escape pods. First, they have to put on some metal pressurized suits that would never work in real life to walk through the water. In a twist that should surprise no one, Token Black Horror Movie Character’s suit was compromised and he implodes. I rolled my eyes that they continued the trope of the only black character dying. Try harder. The crew soldiers on without him, and along the way discover they are not alone. There are at least two creatures of undetermined species tracking them, and Comic Relief Guy has gone from joking to nervously joking. Scared Asian women says “The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum.” Well, she says a less cool, this movie version of that.
From this point on, it turns into a sort of Alien but underwater movie. Except, you know, Alien was good. Don’t worry, it’s going to take another shift again later. They run from one hard to see area to another. Sometimes they are inside, sometimes they are outside. Guy Who Does Nothing has some sort of oxygen suit issue and has to be dragged around after being injured. Just, there’s just no way they drag him around under the ocean everywhere. He’s a useless burden. The monsters aren’t particularly scary. They are very fast, but don’t seem to have fins. How are they swimming so fast? Also, they appear slightly gelatinous, but are inexplicably strong. People start to die one by one, but not as many as you’d think. Characters get separated, then they magically find each other. In the ocean. Almost 7 miles down in the dark. Sure. None of it matters. In the end the creatures that had been chasing them were not the main event. It turns out Cthulhu is loose, and squirting monsters out of god knows where like evil little sea monkeys. If you try to escape, it squirts some monsters that direction. It also ambles about angrily. Why is Cthulhu in this movie? Who knows. It’s a horror movie in February.
Probably the worst new movie I’ve seen in a year, and I watched Return of the Skywalker:
