Review: Underwater (2020)

Stars: Kristen Stewart, T.J. Miller

Budget: $50-80 million?

Directed By: William Eubank

Underwater, underwater, hhmm a tricky one this was some good things was some bad things. I will say the blinding obvious thing that most people have.
It's an underwater alien/aliens clone, more so alien. There's not much in the way of story-line, character development and build up is minimal too.
Not to say there isn't any there but it's like we join a story that's halfway through being told. All the people know each other well and the way it's acted is very believable too, except that means we get little to no further development between them over the course of the movie.
We feel like we've arrived late to the party and everyone else has clicked already.

Now this does mean we get straight into the story right away. The base is immediately in peril. effects wise the film is awesome, the tense scenes are very tense and I even, yes ME, I even got jump scared once!

Acting wise Kristen Stewart is Kristen Stewart as usual bland, nonchalant and lazy eyed lol, kind of fits the character though, she's (and fittingly so as the main character) the only one that gets most character development, though her development is still minimal and VERY predictable.
T.J. Is as always one of my favourite people in the film his dry humour is what I like despite him possibly being a bit of a dick IRL. The rest of the fodder are very predictable in their roles, the stalwart captain who just wants to keep his crew alive (but with a secret).
The couple who really love each other, the comedy relief and the guy who self sacrifices himself early on. On with the film review then.

we join Stewart's character staring blankly into a mirror as she brushes her teeth, the lights blink she frowns as if she feels something we didn't. stepping out into the corridor she is hit by a drip of water which makes her realise something is up.
Suddenly there's a loud explosion and the place starts to shake and fall apart. She meets another survivor as she's running who i'll call self sacrifice man or ssm. they make it to a door which needs to be sealed or they'll die just as two more people are seen running up the corridor. Unfortunately as things go in these types of movies, these nobodies get iced right away as the bulkhead seals. Obviously it's no ones fault and remorse is only felt for a few mere seconds.
Stewart then saves TJ from under some rubble and the crawl into a new section of the base looking for escape pods.

In the escape pod room they see the captain fussing over things in the sealed room, he's clearly sent off all the escape pods and stayed behind himself, like a proper captain. After getting in the room the captain says they need to make it to the submarine. On the way they find mr&miss in love in the communication centre. the plan obviously fucks up the first moment it can forcing them to get to new escape pods, This means they have go for a walk in the water.
Mr SSM selects good gear for everyone else but obviously chooses a defective helmet for himself, causing him to implode as soon as the door is opened and the pressure hits them. While on their way they get a distress beacon from a pod, going to investigate it they find a corpse. a weird little creature leaps from it attacking them. They think they kill it then a bigger one attacks the lift thingy they are in they think that's mother creature.

While walking across the bottom of the ocean to the other section the old section explodes breaking Mr In loves air purifier on his suit. He gets some poisoning due to this. In the new place they regenerate their suits air and batteries but Mr in loves is broke so they will have to go slow so as not to overload the scrubber and poison him. going through a tunnel TJ's Mr comedy relief is killed by a creature in a flooded section.
They get outside Mr in love is dragged off, the captain rescues him, is dragged off himself Stewart's character tries to save him. His suit is compromised by being dragged to the surface by one of the creatures to fast, Stewart's almost too but the captain cuts her free. She's separated from Mr&miss but finds her way to a decommissioned part of the base.
While there she changes her suit gets a flare gun discovers the captains secret about his daughter that was mentioned fleetingly earlier then goes to reach the base the were heading for again.

Almost there Stewart finds Mr&miss with miss dragging an unconscious Mr, they make it to the base but the door is blocked by many, many sleeping thingies. of course Kristen accidentally wakes one up she uses the flare gun to kill it. The flare gun then reveals the true terror of the water, the small creatures are part of a giant creature that's been tearing the base apart. They make it to a pod room, there's 3 pods one of them faulty Stewart reassures them she'll fix it and be right after them.
We then get her reveal of the film too.
There's a little left here but we don't spoil endings at THN as you know, this is a very standard film with very alien like vibes, maybe a bit of cloverfield thrown in too. It's saved by some TJ Miller, good effects and some genuinely tense moments. The best we can say is it's very average so we give it a strong 2 it could be a weak 3 but we don't do half marks here either so 2 out of 5 it is.