HINDSIGHT IS 2020: UNDERWATER (2020) *

Kristen Stewart stars in this underwater Alien rip-off, which I guess makes it… Deep Stew Six?

Anyway, there’s an accident in an underwater mining facility that floods the installation.  Stewart and the reminding survivors put on their deep-sea scuba suits and proceed to make it to a nearby outpost and call for help.  Along the way, they are picked off one by one by hungry squid-faced sea creatures who have an appetite for human flesh. 

Underwater not only rips off the Alien rip-offs of the ‘80s, there’s also a little bit of a Descent vibe in there as the last chunk of the film plays out like that movie.  Only instead of women in spelunking helmets evading slimy monsters in a cave, it’s women in bulky diving suits evading slimy monsters on the ocean floor.  Mostly though, it’s a big, soggy bore.

The first half is like a disaster movie, with K-Stew finding survivors in the rubble, assembling a team, and forming a game plan.  Halfway through, it switches gears and goes into full-on Alien rip-off territory.  I guess it wouldn’t have been so bad if you could see and hear what was going on.  Much of the underwater scenes are murky and thanks to the crappy cinematography, the creature attacks are pretty much a wash.  Couple that with the garbled dialogue and sleepy performances, and it only helps to make this one sink fast. 

After spending much of her post-Twilight years making indie movies, I guess Stewart was trying to appeal to a broader audience by starring in popcorn-friendly material like this and Charlie’s Angels.  She had the right idea, but the execution on this one is just plain shoddy.  (It’s definitely no Charlie’s Angels.)  Too bad they forgot to give her a character to play.  The rest of the cast run the gamut from dull (Vincent Cassel as the boring captain) to annoying (T.J. Miller as the unfunny comic relief).

Sure, the ‘80s underwater horror movie cycle were mostly bad, but at least we can look back on them with a bit of nostalgia.  I’m certain they spent more on the catering budget on this than the entire budgets of Deep Star Six and Lords of the Deep combined.  However, Underwater is just as bad, if not worse than those turkeys.  We do get one decent imploding human gag, although that’s not nearly enough to justify sitting through it.  Despite that one scene, Underwater deserves to be left at the bottom of the ocean.