 Warning! If you go out and see underwater, you may experience heavy signs of deja vu, as often times this film is a lot like other films you've seen already. The synopsis in a nutshell, or in this case a subterrarian laboratory, is simple. A group of scientists seven miles under the ocean are drilling for who the hell knows what, the plot doesn't tell you, the script doesn't tell you, but they find more than they bargained when earthquakes and possibly something more take the lives of many of the members, with the few remaining survivors doing their best to get out alive. This is one of those less is more storylines where you pick up little bits here and there as the film progresses. It's a bit likened to gravity where it's a very basic premise, but you're missing out on the beautiful visuals and the lovely Sandra Bullock. Who it does have is Kristen Stewart, Hollywood's still trying to make her the go-to action heroine, I guess. Fresh off the flop that was Charlie's Angels, here she is again in a movie that I presume will also probably not do that well. I don't know though, the general populace likes these types of movies, these survival horror films, so maybe it'll do okay, I'm not sure. I guess I should kind of do a precursor to all of this, or I should have. I don't go to movies that I want to hate on, because I pay money to see them, and I like movies. I don't hate movies if I do a funny rant or something on a film like the Emoji movie. It's not because I intended on hating it. It's because I have kids, and one of them wanted to go to that film, which is the only reason I went to it. Now this is one of those movies where I had no interest in it, I wouldn't have seen it, but I'm on like a Facebook group where you can get free screeners to films. So once in a while I get free screeners and I go and I would have saw Cats had I got that ticket stub sent my way, but no, I'm not going to Cats, I'm not going to bash on it, it looks like complete trash, why would I waste two hours of my time seeing that thing? As funny as it could have possibly been to review. All I knew before I headed underwater was that Kristen Stewart was in it. I saw maybe a 20 second, you know, one of those like spaz frantic trailers on Twitter, the trailer before the trailer, the pre trailer, and then there was like this conspiracy theory that it might be tied to Cloverfield. Here's the only spoiler I'm going to give you to save you some time. It is not. And you should have known that going in. This was a really stupid theory that people were floating around that apparently don't know nothing about film. One, it's not by the same company, the same studio, so they don't even have the rights to make a Cloverfield movie. And two, it's got TJ Miller in it who was in Cloverfield. He was the camera guy was like, I think it was this first movie. So it'd be really weird if they had HUD back playing an entirely different character. That being said, I can understand why people did think that as this movie does very much feel like a Cloverfield want to be in a sense. The plot is incredibly bare bones. They do a lot of Easter eggs here and there, a lot of little newspaper snippets, a lot of super fast flashing of text on the screen. Much like this movie, even the intro is something you've seen a ton of times. It's got all the fast moving texts, the triple artificial zoom ins on documents, you know, layer upon layer of Photoshop art kind of going this way and that. So high tech, you know, blueprints and schematics and things just moving across the screen and none of it really means anything. I'm being pretty negative right out of the gates on this film, but I wouldn't actually call it a bad movie. There's some fun to be had here. It's popcorn entertainment. I was never really, I rolled my eyes a couple of times, I guess, but there was nothing really that bothered me. The only thing that got on my nerves really was the fact that I've seen so many movies that this just felt like a me too of four or five different ones. And it doesn't really do anything out of on its own to stand out from the pack. If you're going to borrow and steal from other films, at least do it well. And that's the other problem is this doesn't do anything very good. A lot of stuff is just kind of like surface level, pun intended, and it never really goes deep enough. Early on, we see that Kristen Stewart's character Nora has this dog tag of sorts, this necklace around her and it kind of gets stuffed under her like sports bra swimsuit. So I know Kristen Stewart for the fans of her physically, you get to see her in underwear in a bra for a good portion of the film. I'd say a good 25% of her screen time is in very little. I don't know if the director Hollywood was trying to make me like turned on by this, but I wasn't. It was just kind of like that kind of reminds me of my body when I was a 14 year old prepubescent boy. As I was saying though, she has that necklace and she keeps clutching it. It's just such on the nose filmmaking. She's clutching this thing constantly and you're just waiting for this reveal later. And when it happens, you just sit there like, oh, okay, well, that really had no reason to be a buildup at all. You expect some deeper understanding to come out of it or some deeper meaning, but there's nothing. It's just there's nothing here is the problem, I guess. Let's talk about the things I did enjoy about the film. One, it moves really quick. I think it's under two hours, which is fantastic for me. I'm so sick of these movies that really overstay their welcome. Underwater has a lane, it's going down it. It's kind of this, this, you know, thriller suspense underwater stuff I thought was really pretty. I mean, the whole movie takes place underwater, the whole movie. Like visually I was impressed. It's tough to film things underwater. They did a good job with the atmosphere and with some of the CG work. I didn't really think it looked bad at any point. The action kind of varies. There's some really cool moments. The suits that they wear, they reminded me of the Gears of War. If you're into the video games, the Gears of War suits that Dom and those guys wore. And then there was one scene later on where they have these kind of weird weapons that they rarely use. But when they do, there's a scene that comes up. And I don't know if it's just because of the atmosphere of the shot or just what happened. It reminded me of the game Dead Space. And then I was bummed out that this whole movie wasn't like the game Dead Space. If you're looking for a lot of cool kills, gruesome stuff, you're going to the Ron movie as well. There's really only one or two, I think, and nothing's really. There's like one cool kill. And that's about it. There's tons of jump scares. If you're like jump scares, come to this movie. I think they did like seven at a row at one point. It was like jump scare, 10 seconds, jump scare. There was a heavy set gal next to me. And anytime there was a jump scare, I thought for sure she was going to punch me in the face. It's just jump scare. Like some of her popcorn goes up and her hands just like just grazes along my cheek. Just wants to get it. Just teasing it. Director William Mubank really wanted Kristen Stewart to be kind of the Sigourney Weaver of this film though. Kind of the badass taking charge. She's not qualified to lead a crew, but that's where she's at. It doesn't work for me. Kristen Stewart's not bad in this. She's got some range. She's got some emotion. I think she does a very solid job. I just don't see her as a leading lady. She's better off as like the number two or number three supporting actress. T.J. Miller's in this. He's your staple comic relief T.J. Miller character. There's not much more to say than that. He has some good jokes that land. He has some that doesn't. It's fine. It is just this movie across the board. It feels like it was made on a conveyor belt. It's like we need a comic relief T.J. Miller. We need a strong female lead, Kristen Stewart. End of the day, I'd pass on this film. It reeks of the type of movie you'd see for free on Netflix or HBO Go or whatever you use to stream. It's probably going to be there for free in four or five months. I just wait. If you're looking for a scary, you know, survival movie, I'd watch The Descent again. And if you haven't seen The Descent, watch The Descent. That's a that's a sweet movie. This also kind of reminded me of Daylight. Anybody in show of hands, familiar with Daylight came out of the 90s, sliced alone has to lead a band of characters out of a tunnel that has collapsed. And I believe that the catch phrase he had was, there's always a chance. I just remember it's awesome because he has a glow stick at one point. And you know, you have to like shake it or whack it to light it up. He's like, he does it in the most masculine over the top ways. Like you really had to strike this thing at its core to get it to start up. Daylight's fun. I haven't seen it in like 15 years, but I'm sure it's still, I'm sure it's still fun. So watch that too. Watch that. Watch The Descent in Daylight instead of this. I saved you money and I gave you a good experience.