movie reviews underwater

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

“Underwater” is the kind of no-nonsense B-movie with an A-list cast that Hollywood used to make more often. It's a lean and mean film that gets you into its action instantly and then doesn’t release the pressure until the ending credits. In an era of increasingly long blockbusters with pretensions of greatness, it’s refreshing to see a tight movie that knows exactly what it needs to do and sets about doing it. Anchored by another impressive performance from Kristen Stewart and really effective cinematography from Bojan Bazelli , “Underwater” absolutely bullies you into liking it. There's no time not to. Some of the midsection succumbs to incoherent effects in which the murky setting overwhelms the ability to actually be able to tell what the heck is going on, but the flaws of the film never linger long enough to, sorry, sink “Underwater.”

Stewart plays Norah, a worker on an underwater research site that’s literally miles below the surface. An annoying opening narration that feels tacked on by a producer during the film's delayed post-production details how time starts to lose all meaning when you’re that far underwater. There’s no light and you sometimes can’t even tell if you’re awake or dreaming. Just about then, while you're still trying to find your seat in the theater, all hell breaks loose. The hull of the rig starts to crack and explode. Norah runs to safety, eventually finding other survivors that include characters played by Vincent Cassel , Mamoudou Athie , John Gallagher Jr., Jessica Henwick , and T.J. Miller. That’s it. It’s six people trying to survive a catastrophe that has killed the hundreds of other people aboard the site. No shots of emergency crews on the surface. No flashbacks. The escape pods have either been used or destroyed. Their only hope is to literally walk a mile along the ocean floor to another site and hope there are pods that work there. Then they discover they’re not alone.

Yes, “Underwater” is half disaster movie and half monster movie, combining two B-movie genres that I’ve always loved. As “Underwater” shifts from something more akin to “ The Poseidon Adventure ” to a submerged riff on “ Alien ,” the transition doesn’t always work but director William Eubank directs his cast to incredibly strong in-the-moment performances that hold it together. We need to believe Norah’s plight, and Stewart sells the immediacy of her waking nightmare, well-assisted by Henwick and Cassel in particular. (On the other hand, Miller’s schtick gets old fast, but that’s the only weak link). The writers tack on a few too many manipulative back stories to try to heighten the emotional stakes, but that’s commonplace in both genres on which “Underwater” is riffing.

It also helps that the producers of “Underwater” tapped the eye of the great Bojan Bazelli to shoot the film. The cinematographer behind “ A Cure for Wellness ” and “ The Ring ” knows how to build tension with a combination of extreme close-ups that put us inside Norah’s helmet while never losing the geography of where these people are fighting against incredible odds. When the movie becomes a full-out monster flick, Bazelli and Eubank could have dialed down the underwater murk a few degrees, but it’s still an effective film visually, the value of which cannot be understated. Most bad B-movies like “Underwater” rely on a steady diet of jump scares and shaky camerawork to disguise their low budgets and lack of visual acuity. What sets this apart is that there’s an artistry to the visuals and captivating sound design. The film is filled with flashing lights of broken or breaking equipment and the din of metal creaking under the pressure of water. It’s all necessary to enhance the tension.

What I think I responded to the most in “Underwater” is its relentlessness. It’s almost real time for at the least first chunk of the movie, and the immediacy of the filmmaking gives it power. "Underwater" discards all that on-the-surface nonsense that worse movies would have forced viewers through, in which we meet the characters and foreshadow weird happenings underwater. There’s no time for that. Don’t show up late. It’s a film that’s about panic, and how unexpected heroes can be made through instinctual response to adversity. That, and underwater monsters.

The final act of “Underwater” will likely divide some people, but I’m a fan of when a B-movie really goes for it, and there are a few beats in this one’s final scenes that are impressively ambitious. My kids are at an age where they’re fascinated by the idea that there could be species so far below the ocean’s surface that we have yet to identify them. When they’re old enough, I’ll show them “Underwater.” Maybe they’ll like B-movies too. 

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Now playing

Arthur the King

High & Low – John Galliano

Niani scott.

Peyton Robinson

Carol Doda Topless at the Condor

Marya e. gates.

Late Night with the Devil

Matt zoller seitz.

We Were the Lucky Ones

Robert daniels, film credits.

Underwater (2020)

Rated PG-13

Kristen Stewart as Norah Price

T. J. Miller as Paul

Vincent Cassel as Le capitaine

Jessica Henwick as Emily

• William Eubank
• Brian Duffield
• Brian Berdan
• Todd E. Miller

Cinematography

• Bojan Bazelli

Original Music Composer

• Brandon Roberts
• Marco Beltrami

Latest blog posts

Until It’s Too Late: Bertrand Bonello on The Beast

O.J. Simpson Dies: The Rise & Fall of A Superstar

Which Cannes Film Will Win the Palme d’Or? Let’s Rank Their Chances

Second Sight Drops 4K Releases for Excellent Films by Brandon Cronenberg, Jeremy Saulnier, and Alexandre Aja

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Civil War Link to Civil War
• Monkey Man Link to Monkey Man
• The First Omen Link to The First Omen

New TV Tonight

• Fallout: Season 1
• Chucky: Season 3
• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• Mr Bates vs The Post Office: Season 1
• Franklin: Season 1
• Dora: Season 1
• Good Times: Season 1
• Beacon 23: Season 2

Most Popular TV on RT

• Ripley: Season 1
• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• Parasyte: The Grey: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• Sugar: Season 1
• We Were the Lucky Ones: Season 1
• X-Men '97: Season 1
• A Gentleman in Moscow: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Fallout Link to Fallout
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Best Movies of 2024: Best New Movies to Watch Now

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

Fallout : What It Gets Right, and What It Gets Wrong

CinemaCon 2024: Day 3 – Disney Previews Deadpool & Wolverine , Moana 2 , Alien: Romulus , and More

• Trending on RT
• Play Movie Trivia
• New on Streaming
• CinemaCon 2024

Underwater Reviews

William Eubank delivers a remarkably well-filmed sci-fi horror-thriller filled with great tension, surprisingly visible (!) action, fantastic production design, and some really captivating VFX work.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 24, 2023

And, amid all the oceanic dread is a fundamental shred of optimism that lances the dark ending—for the sake of others, we have to be less thoughtless.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 20, 2023

It might not reinvent the wheel but unlike the drilling that initiates the accident, it is neither deep nor boring. Underwater is a B movie as slick as oil and is a gem hidden in the busy waters of February’s cinematic releases like a rare pearl.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 11, 2022

It’s not all that original and it has some character issues. At the same time, it’s a fun deep-sea survival romp that essentially delivers on its promises.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 21, 2022

Though Underwater barely makes time for character development, the purely situational nature of the movie and distinct actors, Stewart above all, keep us engaged for 90 minutes of B-movie pleasure.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 22, 2022

Taut, immediate thrills and a great desperate performance from Stewart are undercut but long, murky non-visible sequences of attacking underwater whatevers.

Full Review | Sep 13, 2021

For the type of movies, particularly of the horror genre, that movie studios usually dump into theaters in January- this is a surprisingly solid one.

Full Review | Original Score: 3 / 5 | Jun 25, 2021

This film is basically a knock off underwater version of "Alien". Its completely derivative script offers nothing new or worth watching.

Full Review | Original Score: D- | Jun 24, 2021

To its credit, perhaps, Underwater doesn't hang around long enough to become boring.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 28, 2021

Halfway decent January junk food, benefiting mightily from the presence of Kristen Stewart in a de facto Sigourney Weaver role.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 5, 2021

Underwater is an ocean floor, people in peril flick, with loads of wet, claustrophobic atmosphere but little in the way of actual thrills.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 30, 2021

For true fans of the genre, Underwater isn't going to cut it. It's a rushed adventure that hopes the audience doesn't want to get too technical and will give it some leeway, sacrificing quality for a quick fix.

Full Review | Jan 28, 2021

Builds to an insane climax that you wish went on for just a few minutes longer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 30, 2020

Underwater is certainly derivative and falls back on clichés at regular turns - from the slow-motion pauses at moments of heightened action to the familiar swipes at corporate greed and hubris.

Full Review | Dec 21, 2020

The movie is relentlessly OK, nothing more, nothing less.

Full Review | Nov 23, 2020

A chilling atmosphere and gorgeous creature design make this a fun and worthwhile affair.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.25/10 | Oct 21, 2020

Settles into a rather dull rhythm of characters looking at each other with frightened faces while they wander about in the dark.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 16, 2020

Mainlining an 'Alien, but with big fish' vibe, what Underwater lacks in originality it makes up for in lean, mean menace.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2020

Yes we've seen this story before, but when it's re-told this damn well, you can sign me up every time.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2020

If you want a horror flick with memorable characters and a solid plot, then you'll have to look elsewhere.

Full Review | Jul 12, 2020

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

Explaining the News to Our Kids

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

Common sense media reviewers.

Kristen Stewart sci-fi survival thriller has scares, swears.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

When life gets scary and you feel powerless, stop

Women and men in work environment demonstrate team

Sci-fi violence includes frightening life-threaten

When changing in and out of diving suits, male and

Strong language includes "ass," "damn," "goddamned

Parents need to know that Underwater is a sci-fi thriller about a team of researchers who face unknown peril at the bottom of the ocean. This is a monster movie that's meant to scare you -- and it definitely does. But while you can expect deaths (including people imploding inside deep sea suits), near…

Positive Messages

When life gets scary and you feel powerless, stop feeling and start doing. Teamwork can help you overcome extreme challenges.

Positive Role Models

Women and men in work environment demonstrate teamwork, each bringing different skills, abilities to keep others calm in stressful situations. Norah is a smart, capable, brave, resourceful, quick-thinking computer engineer -- in keeping her head and thinking of others, she becomes a hero. Male members of the crew aren't hypermasculine stereotypes.

Violence & Scariness

Sci-fi violence includes frightening life-threatening explosions, discovery of dead bodies. Humans implode inside deep sea suits and battle terrifying monsters. Characters are in intense peril.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

When changing in and out of diving suits, male and female characters strip down to non-revealing underwear; this eventually leads to two female characters spending several scenes running around in only their skivvies. Two characters are dating but don't engage in PDA.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes "ass," "damn," "goddamned," "hell," and multiple uses of "s--t" and "f--k."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Underwater is a sci-fi thriller about a team of researchers who face unknown peril at the bottom of the ocean. This is a monster movie that's meant to scare you -- and it definitely does. But while you can expect deaths (including people imploding inside deep sea suits), near-constant peril, and lots of tense moments, nothing is especially graphic. It's basically an oceanic Alien , down to centering on a tough woman, Norah ( Kristen Stewart ), who has to figure out how to outsmart a terrifying creature. She makes a fantastic role model as a modern-day Ellen Ripley -- although, just like Ripley, she ends up taking care of some of her tasks in her underwear. The male members of the crew aren't hypermasculine stereotypes (one even carries a stuffed animal), and the group demonstrates both courage and excellent teamwork. Strong language ("s--t," "f--k," etc.) is used but isn't constant. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (9)
• Kids say (17)

Based on 9 parent reviews

Watched it with my 10yo movie lover

Fantastic, loved it, what's the story.

In UNDERWATER, Norah ( Kristen Stewart ) and her team of researchers are investigating the ocean depths when some kind of earthquake damages their lab beyond repair. With their oxygen running out, their only hope of survival is to put on diving suits and walk across the ocean floor to reach another station. But as they set out on their journey, they realize that a dangerous unknown creature is lurking in the dark waters.

Is It Any Good?

Yes, this is an Alien knockoff, but that doesn't mean it's not enthralling -- and it's modernized in a way that may appeal more to older teens. To that end, director William Eubank includes a couple of great lines in Underwater that will connect directly to Gen Z, tapping into a message of how to deal with feeling helpless in an out-of-control world. It's a little pat, but it's still empowering (and if the film winds up resonating with teens, the lines could end up on memes).

That message is a nice cap on a film that, while thoroughly entertaining, feels made to trigger anxiety attacks. You never know what monster will jump out or which character will die next (unfortunately, the film does stick with the scary movie cliché of the type of character who always dies first). Stewart's trademark acting style -- nervous and uncomfortable -- works well here; her character doesn't know what the next second holds, but she just keeps moving forward, one foot in front of the other. Norah is the embodiment of the airplane emergency instructions: She puts on her own oxygen mask first by summoning her own survival skills and then helps the others put their masks on -- in some cases, dragging them along behind her. Norah is so far from Stewart's weak-willed Twilight character Bella that, by movie's end, we've seen a total transformation of not only Norah but Stewart herself.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Underwater compares to other monster movies. Why do you think audiences enjoy watching humans battle made-up creatures? How does it make you feel when the movie's over?

How did the film present counter-stereotypes in terms of gender roles? How does that compare with other movies you've seen, particularly older ones?

What parts of the movie did you find scary ? How did the filmmakers prompt that emotion? Would the scenes have felt the same with different music? Lighting? Do movies have to be violent to be scary?

How does the crew demonstrate teamwork ? Much of the teamwork we see also takes courage . What actions did you see that count as courage rather than just a survival instinct?

What did you think about Norah's statement that feelings of powerlessness are just feelings -- that you should stop feeling and start doing? Is that a message you can apply to real life?

Movie Details

• In theaters : January 10, 2020
• On DVD or streaming : April 14, 2020
• Cast : Kristen Stewart , T.J. Miller , Jessica Henwick
• Director : William Eubank
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Gay actors, Asian actors
• Studios : Twentieth Century Fox , Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Topics : Great Girl Role Models , Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires , Ocean Creatures , Science and Nature
• Character Strengths : Courage , Teamwork
• Run time : 95 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sci-fi action and terror, and brief strong language
• Last updated : December 28, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

47 Meters Down

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Sci-fi movies, scary movies for kids, related topics.

• Great Girl Role Models
• Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Ocean Creatures
• Science and Nature

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

‘Underwater’: Film Review

Kristen Stewart battles an alien of the deep in a waterlogged thriller that can't come up with one original variation on the movies it's ripping off.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• ‘Sting’ Review: A Giant Spider Grows in Brooklyn in a Knowingly Cheeseball Indie Horror Trifle 2 days ago
• ‘Back to Black’ Review: Marisa Abela Nails Amy Winehouse in Every Look, Mood and Note in a Biopic at Once Forthright and Forbidding 5 days ago
• ‘The People’s Joker’ Is a Comic-Book Fantasia More Authentic Than Just About Any Comic-Book Movie 1 week ago

Before technology took over the movies, a cruddy sci-fi action thriller often looked just as bad as it played. No longer. “ Underwater ,” a deep-sea knockoff of “Alien” set on a corporate research rig seven miles beneath the surface of the ocean, has been made with the kind of lavish atmospheric precision that, 30 years ago, you’d have been hard-pressed to find outside a movie directed by James Cameron. Now, though, even a dregs-of-January throwaway will get slathered in the kind of grand-scale murk and logistical explosiveness that’s meant to excite us, even if the story it’s telling is rudderless junk.

Well, guess what? It doesn’t excite us. “Underwater” is a stupefying entertainment in which every claustrophobic space and apocalyptic crash of water registers as a slick visual trigger, yet it’s all built on top of a dramatic void. It’s boredom in Sensurround.

The film opens with its grabbiest visual effect, which is Kristen Stewart ’s hair. It’s been dyed a whiter shade of blonde and cropped so prison-camp short that it’s beyond anything that pretends to look fetching; but that’s what’s supposed to make it cool. Stewart plays Norah, a mechanical engineer who is one of a team of researchers living in an undersea station that consists of long modular passageways that appear as flimsy as an oversize doll’s house. Early on, when water starts crashing through the walls in the wave equivalent of bullet-time, turning the place into a science-lab Titanic that’s already sunk, we experience every jolt and surge, the joints of the structure creaking with a pressure so intense it sounds otherworldly (and, in fact, is). The scale of destruction is undeniably impressive, yet the film already feels waterlogged.

Norah, teaming up with Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie), escapes the deluge, and they join forces with half a dozen coworkers from the collapsing facility, all under the leadership of the mission’s captain, played by the Picasso-eyed French character actor Vincent Cassel , who like everyone else in the film has a barely written role, so that even his surly charisma is wasted. The captain comes up with a Hail Mary plan: They will walk along the bottom of the ocean to reach the project’s Roebuck drill station, where they can take shelter and get to the surface. The plan, as laid out, holds very little water, dramatically or as a plausible survival option — it’s just an excuse to get everyone to put on deep-sea diving suits as chunky as refrigerators, and to kill time until the monsters show up.

Popular on Variety

The days when acting in a film like “Underwater” could dim your star belong to the past. Yet watching it, you still think: What’s an actress as classy as Kristen Stewart doing in a potboiler like this? Yes, it’s important to demonstrate you’ve got the right commercial attitude, but when you take on the lead in a movie so listlessly derivative, it tends to be a lose-lose situation, creatively and at the box office. In “Underwater,” Stewart locks herself in terse anxiety mode and never deviates from it. She’s an actress who needs a good script to tap her verbal sharpness, but it’s clear that someone convinced her that “Underwater” would give her the chance to be “just like” Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley (right down to the anti-movie-star coif). But when you’re “just like” a character who’s that iconic, you’re really nowhere at all.

A scene with a darting pink undersea alien fetus is truly unfortunate. Does the film really want to be this much of a carbon copy of “Alien,” given that it’s a thousand times less scary? At the same time, the director, William Eubank, seems to be taking cues from “The Meg,” going for the “size matters” school of monster-jawed menace. The main creature in “Underwater” suggests a jellyfish the size of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon, with rows of teeth that are like something out of “The Nun.” It’s a beast that looks like it could eat an entire underwater station in one bite, even as it’s taking nibbles out of a talented actress’s career.

Reviewed at Park Avenue Screening Room, New York, Jan. 6, 2020. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 95 MIN.

• Production: A 20th Century Fox release of a TSG Entertainment, Chernin Entertainment production. Producers: Peter Chernin, Tonia Davis, Jenno Topping. Executive producer: Kevin Halloran.  
• Crew: Director: William Eubank. Screenplay: Brian Duffield, Adam Cozad. Camera (color, widescreen): Bojan Bazelli. Editors: Brian Berdan, Willliam Hoy, Todd E. Miller. Music: Marco Beltrami, Brandon Roberts.
• With: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, T.J. Miller, Jessica Henwick, John Gallagher Jr., Mamoudou Athie, Gunner Wright.

More From Our Brands

Jakob nowell leads sublime’s return, shows star power at coachella 2024, the discontinued daytona le mans is now selling for $320,000, coyotes’ name, logo to remain in phoenix while team relocates, be tough on dirt but gentle on your body with the best soaps for sensitive skin, peacemaker season 2: james gunn shares photo from first day of filming , verify it's you, please log in.

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

Underwater Is a Relentlessly Entertaining Deep-sea Catastrophe

Sometimes, character development is overrated. Underwater begins with a quiet scene — the film’s only quiet scene — of Kristen Stewart’s engineer Norah spotting a spider creeping along the sink in a bathroom of the massive undersea drilling operation where she works. They’re somewhere in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point of the world’s oceans, and Norah spares the spider, presumably because she feels for this poor arachnid soul stuck here at the bottom of the Earth with her. That’s all I have to know; I like Norah already.

And then, suddenly, all hell breaks loose, and keeps breaking for the rest of the movie. The big underwater station we’re on shakes violently, Norah starts running, and walls and ceilings and all sorts of other things start to collapse. Is it a breach, a malfunction, an earthquake, a monster? Why not all those things? The primary pleasure of Underwater is the spectacle of everything going wrong, all at once, as Norah and a small group of survivors — including their captain, played by Vincent Cassel — struggle to find safety. They decide that their only hope is to exit this structure, wearing some huge, newfangled diving outfits that will allow them to survive six miles deep, and slowly walk their way across the ocean floor to another, distant rig. Oh, and it’s pitch-black outside. Oh, and they’re running out of oxygen. Oh, and they’re going mad from the pressure. Oh, and there’s also, like, a thing out there. Maybe more than one. It’s all your fears — of the deep, of tight spaces, of the dark, of giant-creepy-crawly-squishy things — rolled into one.

Underwater might look on its surface like an Alien retread, but it doesn’t dole out the scares in artful, tensely conceived little pieces like that film does. Instead, it smothers you in them. It’s relentless, and voracious, with a kind of kitchen-sink bravado when it comes to jump scares. Even the monster, a genuinely Lovecraftian tentacular nightmare, keeps going: First it seems like it’s one thing, then another, then another, and then it turns out to be all the things, like it’s been pieced together from everything you ever found unthinkably gross or unthinkably unthinkable.

You could call Underwater the Mad Max: Fury Road of deep-sea catastrophe flicks, but it’s a far blunter instrument; it lacks that latter film’s shards of humanism or its operatic extravagance. Director William Eubank even steps on his own picture’s brief, half-hearted stabs at emotional texture: Occasional bits of dialogue are mostly drowned out by all the screeching, crashing metal; I think two of these people were supposed to be lovers, but I could be wrong. There are other character details, but they’re meager: One guy carries a small, stuffed plush bunny around with him. After another character dies ( spoiler alert: someone dies ), we see a photo of their long-departed daughter. At one point, Norah talks about an old ex who … Krraanng! Crgggunch! Kphoooom! 

Underwater has been sitting on a shelf for some years, it seems, and it has some rough edges that suggest it’s been revised over that period. The film was shot in 2017, and reports from the time suggest that it was supposed to be about some underwater scientists, though I have no real idea if that’s just poor reporting or evidence of rewrites and/or reshoots. Regardless, the resulting movie is entertaining in its own insistent little way. It’s been scrubbed clean of anything resembling subtlety, or complexity, but it makes up for that with a hard-charging, ruthless desire to terrify us into submission. It doesn’t ask us to suspend our disbelief so much as it stomps on our disbelief, then bludgeons it. And it all kind of works. Anything seems possible down there.

• vulture homepage lede
• movie review
• kristen stewart

Most Viewed Stories

• A Hidden Sexual-Assault Scandal at the New York Philharmonic
• No One’s Watching the Best Comedy on Netflix
• The 10 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Weekend
• Civil War Isn’t the Movie You Think It Is
• A Reasonable List of Demands for Season Two of Fallout
• Fallout Series-Premiere Recap: Orange Colored Sky

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

Underwater Review

A slick and enjoyable sci-fi thriller that never quite breaches greatness..

59 Movies to Geek Out Over in 2020

Underwater is sadly less than the sum of its rather exciting parts. Kristen Stewart shines as does the potential for a better film that skews closer to the claustrophobic horror of alien rather than the blockbuster blandness that the film ends up going for. But if you want a popcorn sci-fi flick that might make you jump, has easy to watch performances, and cements Stewart as an action star in the making you could do worse than checking out this flawed but fun film.

In This Article

More Reviews by Rosie Knight

Ign recommends.

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Underwater’ Review: Wobbly Sea Legs

Kristen Stewart is lean, intense and taciturn in this aquatic “Alien” attempt. But the movie is more boring than horrific.

• Share full article

By Glenn Kenny

Early on in this mercifully short horror picture, a crew member — one of a handful trapped nearly seven miles beneath the ocean in a collapsing futuristic oil rig — wrests from the sea an aggressive, super-gnarly-looking creature, which he brings to show the gang. “Oh no,” a viewer might think, “you never bring the gnarly-looking thing back on the ship. Has no one in this movie seen ‘Alien?’” Maybe, maybe not, but it doesn’t matter, as the thing doesn’t get to do much in that moment.

Welcome to the world of “Underwater,” a movie whose own sea legs are so wobbly, you’re never quite sure whether that weak fake-out was even deliberate. Directed by William Eubank from a script by Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad, it tries to establish some “Alien”-of-the-deep bona fides with its lead, Kristen Stewart, being lean, taciturn and intense in the opening scene. Stewart may well be as consequential a screen actress as Sigourney Weaver, but dreck like this isn’t going to build a comparable filmography.

The crew member who finds the gnarly thing is played by T.J. Miller. The film wrapped before his brush with the law . While this may have contributed to the movie’s long shelving, Miller’s hardly the only problem here.

It’s a challenge to keep action coherent and build suspense in the submerged environment simulated in “Underwater,” but Eubank doesn’t meet it, instead falling back on stale shocks that are not credibly buttressed by swelling bass effects on the soundtrack. And the final form of the menacing sea creature is in its way as laughable as the carpet monster in the 1964 cinematic mishap “The Creeping Terror.”

Rated PG-13 for gnarly looking things and bass-boosted shock scares. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Even before his new film “Civil War” was released, the writer-director Alex Garland faced controversy over his vision of a divided America with Texas and California as allies .

Theda Hammel’s directorial debut, “Stress Positions,” a comedy about millennials weathering the early days of the pandemic , will ask audiences to return to a time that many people would rather forget.

“Fallout,” TV’s latest big-ticket video game adaptation, takes a satirical, self-aware approach to the End Times .

“Sasquatch Sunset” follows the creatures as they go about their lives. We had so many questions. The film’s cast and crew had answers .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Cookie banner

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy . Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use , which became effective December 20, 2019.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies.

Follow The Ringer online:

• Follow The Ringer on Twitter
• Follow The Ringer on Instagram
• Follow The Ringer on Youtube

Site search

• What to Watch
• Bill Simmons Podcast
• 24 Question Party People
• 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s
• Against All Odds
• Bachelor Party
• The Bakari Sellers Podcast
• Beyond the Arc
• The Big Picture
• Black Girl Songbook
• Book of Basketball 2.0
• Boom/Bust: HQ Trivia
• Counter Pressed
• The Dave Chang Show
• East Coast Bias
• Every Single Album: Taylor Swift
• Extra Point Taken
• Fairway Rollin’
• Fantasy Football Show
• The Fozcast
• The Full Go
• Gambling Show
• Gene and Roger
• Higher Learning
• The Hottest Take
• Jam Session
• Just Like Us
• Larry Wilmore: Black on the Air
• Last Song Standing
• The Local Angle
• Masked Man Show
• The Mismatch
• Mint Edition
• Morally Corrupt Bravo Show
• New York, New York
• Off the Pike
• One Shining Podcast
• Philly Special
• Plain English
• The Pod Has Spoken
• The Press Box
• The Prestige TV Podcast
• Recipe Club
• The Rewatchables
• Ringer Dish
• The Ringer-Verse
• The Ripple Effect
• The Rugby Pod
• The Ryen Russillo Podcast
• Sports Cards Nonsense
• Slow News Day
• Speidi’s 16th Minute
• Somebody’s Gotta Win
• Sports Card Nonsense
• This Blew Up
• Trial by Content
• Wednesday Worldwide
• What If? The Len Bias Story
• Wrighty’s House
• Wrestling Show
• Latest Episodes
• All Podcasts

Filed under:

• Pop Culture

‘Underwater’ Is Drowning in Its Influences

Kristen Stewart’s claustrophobic deep-sea sci-fi/horror flick fits nicely alongside ‘Alien,’ even if it comes nowhere close to surpassing it

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Twitter
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: ‘Underwater’ Is Drowning in Its Influences

Early on in Underwater , its characters—a crew of researchers who’ve been submerged 7 miles below the ocean’s surface near the Mariana Trench in a massive laboratory—recall a colleague who liked to tell the same joke over and over again: the repetition was the punch line. Whether or not the film’s screenwriters meant for this anecdote to be self-reflexive is hard to say, but it neatly sums up the experience of watching a movie whose determination to be unoriginal represents a kind of integrity. It knows that we know what’s coming, and it gives it to us, on point and on schedule without any funny business.

There are no twists here, and no ulterior motives toward satire or subversion—nor any sense of wonder. Just a series of beats that have been mapped out for 40 years, since the debut of Alien. What’s funny is that when Alien premiered in 1979, it was dismissed by some critics as old hat. Pauline Kael famously carped that it was nothing more than an elaborately staged haunted house movie, a designation that reduced the structural perfection of Ridley Scott’s classic to a collection of tropes.

Instead of recognizing what Alien was really about—a survival-of-the-fittest allegory in which the human beings were all fighting for second place (and the android got the bronze)—Kael and other dissenters tried to fob it off as disposable genre fare. It’s arguable that the film’s only flaw was the need to have any member of the Nostromo ’s crew survive at all. It was a concession to form nicely mitigated by the casting and acting of Sigourney Weaver, whose victory was at least a genuine surprise, dramaturgically speaking. Long before academics started theorizing about the “ Final Girl ” in horror movies, Ellen Ripley’s fortunate resourcefulness—you gotta be good to be lucky and vice versa—punctured the alpha-male pecking order of action cinema.

There’s no doubt that Kristen Stewart has been styled to evoke Weaver as Ripley in Underwater , to the point of collapsing the character’s various incarnations into one package: She’s got close-cropped hair (shades of Alien 3 ), carries a big gun (á la Aliens ), and spends a significant amount of time running around in her underwear (as in the climax of Alien ), all while projecting the same terse toughness as her inspiration. One of Underwater ’s only novelties is the sight of Stewart in her first action-heroine role (like a tree falling in the forest, Charlie’s Angels didn’t happen and you can’t prove it). Her character, Norah, isn’t as well sketched as Ripley (an understatement), giving Stewart only a few opportunities to express her trademark nerviness.

Long before Underwater shows its hand as a creature feature, it tries—in generic but earnest ways—to deal with the idea of contents under pressure, of the psychology that comes with living and working so far from the surface and the sun. And if there’s one thing Stewart can sell, it’s inwardness—the feeling that she’s eating herself up from the inside.

In a more patient movie, the contrast between Norah’s anxious reticence and the (predictably) variegated behaviors of her comrades—the stoic captain (Vincent Cassel); the flighty grad student (Jessica Henwick); the comic relief (T.J. Miller)—would be allowed to develop, but Underwater is in a rush to get started. Before we’ve met everybody, they’re fighting for their lives in the aftermath of an earthquake that significantly damages their rig and engages some life-or-death problem-solving skills.

Director William Eubank ( The Signal ) tries to solve the problem of staging ensemble drama in cramped quarters by leaning into the claustrophobia, shooting endless close-ups, which unfortunately succeeds mostly in confusing our sense of onscreen space. Even while the dialogue explains where the characters are and where they have to go in order to hitch a ride topside, the geography feels jumbled. At the same time, Bojan Bazelli’s cinematography is extraordinary in its different gradations of metal and murk; shooting in low, exclusively artificial light, he evokes our primal fears of something legitimately vast and bottomless—the ocean as its own galaxy.

Inevitably, our heroes come across a strange, grotesque life form that means to do them harm, and while Eubank deserves a bit of credit for dragging out the reveal of the monster’s actual dimensions and appearance until almost an hour into a 95-minute movie, the thing(s) themselves are a letdown (with none of the personality of, say, Crawl ’s CGI alligators or even the resilient little critter in 2017’s Alien rip-off, Life ). An extended sequence in which Norah becomes separated from the group offers some relatively well-choreographed stalk-and-swim shenanigans, except that the lack of star power in the film outside of Stewart offsets any possibility that her character could bite it. The reason Ripley’s survival in Alien was so satisfying is because she wasn’t being played by a top-billed movie star: She was a legitimate underdog. Here, Stewart’s celebrity outstrips the rest of the actors put together, and because Eubanks is so committed to delivering the goods, he doesn’t dare the kind of Executive Decision / Triple Frontier maneuver that takes a famous performer out earlier than expected.

There is, I suppose, one late revelation in Underwater that lands—nothing we haven’t seen before, but again, thanks to Bazelli and his ability to integrate special effects into his cinematography, it has an uncommon scale and menace. (Without offering spoilers, I’ll say I thought of Frank Darabont’s killer Stephen King adaptation The Mist , which eventually embraces its Lovecraftian heritage in a big old bear hug.) There are a few breathtaking shots that not only justify Underwater ’s existence but also the idea of seeing it in a theater, because otherwise there’s not much separating it from straight-to-Netflix dreck like The Cloverfield Paradox , or the cycle of Alien- but-underwater movies that proliferated at the end of the 1980s ( DeepStar Six and Leviathan , both of which are more fun than you remember). As for Stewart, she’ll hopefully get a chance to carry something big and shiny that’s also less perfunctory, because her boredom during Underwater is palpable. It’s only when Norah has to decide whether or not to blow the whole thing up that the actress looks engaged. Hmm, wonder why?

Adam Nayman is a film critic, teacher, and author based in Toronto; his book The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together is available now from Abrams.

Next Up In Movies

• ‘Civil War’ With Alex Garland! Plus: The 10 Most Anticipated Movies Out of CinemaCon.
• ‘Shogun’ Episode 8, ‘Ripley’ Episode 3, and ‘Top Chef’ Episode 4
• Covering the Campaign and Trump’s Third Run for the White House With New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi
• Can IMAX Save Movie Theaters?
• Trial Royale: Best Spielberg Movie, Round 3—Final Round
• ‘Civil War’ Probably Isn’t What You Expected It to Be 

Sign up for the The Ringer Newsletter

Thanks for signing up.

Check your inbox for a welcome email.

Oops. Something went wrong. Please enter a valid email and try again.

Will Caitlin Clark Dominate in the WNBA?

Seerat Sohi talks Caitlin Clark’s WNBA transition and possible landing spots for draft prospects

Rihanna Wants Monica Back on ‘RHOSLC’? Plus, ‘Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard,’ ‘Summer House,’ ‘The Valley,’ and ‘Vanderpump Rules.’

Rachel and Callie discuss the Bravo news of the week and dive into some recent episodes. Then, Jodi hops on to talk ‘The Valley’ and ‘Vanderpump Rules.’

Why AEW Airing the CM Punk Footage Was a Bad Look. Plus, the Beginning of the Maj Era.

Drew McIntyre is maj, Rosenberg sounds off on AEW airing the backstage CM Punk footage, and Dip gives his take on WrestleMania

Our Season Awards and Takeaways

Austin and Pausha are back to hand out season awards for Rookie of the Year, Best Defender, Favorite Play of the Season, and more

“I’m Here for It”

Jason talks about how the Chicago Bulls clinched a play-in spot and why Billy Donovan has leverage

Discussing Momofuku Chili Crunch, With Marguerite Mariscal

Dave is joined by Momofuku CEO Marguerite Mariscal to talk about challenges and next steps with the name "chili crunch"

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

• DVD & Streaming
• Action/Adventure , Drama , Horror , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• January 10, 2020
• Kristen Stewart as Norah; T.J. Miller as Paul; Vincent Cassel as Captain; Jessica Henwick as Emily; Mamoudou Athie as Rodrigo; John Gallagher Jr. as Smith

Home Release Date

• April 14, 2020
• William Eubank

Distributor

• 20th Century Fox

Movie Review

“There’s a comfort to cynicism: There’s a lot less to lose,” we hear twentysomething Norah thinking to herself as she stares into a large community bathroom mirror and brushes her teeth.

Norah’s a solitary figure, a mechanical engineer on a deep-sea research project and drilling station. She’s obviously left something (someone?) behind. And her short, dour inner monologue is the only clue we have about how she ended up blankly staring at herself in a mirror, in an underwater compound some seven miles deep in the Mariana Trench.

That, however, is all there’s time for when it comes to Norah’s inner life.

The young engineer suddenly senses some shift, some sound, some change in the air of this sprawling facility of passageways and workrooms and labs. She steps to the bathroom entry door and raises her hand: Is that a splash of water falling from the passageway’s ceiling?

That’s impossible. That would mean …

That’s when the first thunderous thump hits the long passageway made up of tons of steel, concrete and wood. The passageway lurches and then begins to buckle and burst as thousands of pounds of pressurized water begin breaching the walls and flooding in Norah’s direction.

Dressed in nothing but sweatpants and a sports bra, her typical sleepwear, Norah runs screaming down an opposing hallway trying to alert any and all occupants that they need to get out. NOW . She tumbles, bounces off impossibly twisting walls, gashing her face, legs and feet as she scrabbles over rent metal and debris that shouldn’t be in the direct path of her escape.

Escape! That’s it!

Norah heads toward the nearest escape pods. But first she must close off this gushing passageway with an emergency door—the only thing that can hold back the flood of water.

Was it an earthquake? Or something … else? They are drilling down into the Earth’s substructure with the massive Roebuck drill. Whatever that thumping, crunching force is, it’s dangerous. And at this depth, the water all around them means certain death.

Norah, closes the passageway, then runs and crawls on.

She has to find a way, a way out before the out comes flooding in.

Positive Elements

Norah soon locates a handful of other survivors. But when they make their way to the escape pod room, they find that no pods remain. So, the survivors rally together, comfort each other and devise a plan to reach the Roebuck drilling station and another possible means of escape.

Norah, in particular, risks her life in desperate efforts to battle the forces around her and to help the wounded and frightened. She and another female survivor, Emily, struggle to drag a fallen male comrade across a wide-and-deadly stretch of ocean floor.

As the survivors implement their dangerous plan, they repeatedly make self-sacrificial choices to help their companions survive. Several people even choose to make the ultimate sacrifice and freely give up their lives for the sake of others.

Spiritual Elements

Sexual content.

Norah and Emily must strip down to skimpy underwear to fit into protective deep-water suits. We see both in those revealing and sometimes water-soaked undergarments. One of the male survivors, when stripping down, is shown shirtless and in tattered undershorts.

A character named Paul tends to relive tense moments with bursts of verbal humor—many of which can be crude or bawdy. For instance, when Norah saves him from being trapped under fallen debris, he comedically gushes his thanks, saying, “You sweet, flat-chested elven creature!”

Violent Content

The movie’s story is scripted as a fast-running actioner. It’s filled with explosions, collapsing underwater structures and people dying in a variety of ways. And every surviving human in the tale sports either broken bones, slashed skin or bloodied extremities—sometimes all three. The thumping, slashing and exploding violence isn’t as gory as it could have been, but it’s still wince-worthy in many cases.

We see crushing, flooding moments in the various underwater structures as well as the slashing, bloody impact that the destruction has on shoeless, barely dressed Norah and others. Norah is forced to close a safety door, trapping fellow victims in the onrushing flood. We also learn that the thermal heat and pressure are building in the drill section of the underwater facility, lending a ticking clock of destruction to the survivors’ struggle.

The pressure of the water itself causes an underwater suit to implode, crushing its occupant into bloody chunks. Another suit actually explodes as it’s dragged quickly upward toward the surface, obliterating its occupant in an explosive detonation. (Destructive explosions occur pretty much throughout the film.) But explosive decompression isn’t the only threat here. Falling station debris also threatens the humans trying to get to safety.

[ Spoiler Warning ] Then there are the sea creatures. Our first encounter is with a two-foot-long, slug-like monstrosity that’s seen latched onto and eating a human corpse. Other sharp-clawed beasties soon appear in more human sizes, and they attempt and succeed at swallowing one human survivor whole. The creatures also swim up and drag away several victims in the black, deep-sea waters. We also encounter a gigantic version of the undersea monsters, one big enough to crush the entire underwater station. Humans die repeatedly at the monster’s tentacled hands—including one unfortunate who is attacked from within his own underwater suit, blood gushing up in his clear helmet. A large chunk of debris barely misses crushing someone and it incapacitates another.

Crude or Profane Language

Two f-words and a dozen or so s-words join a couple uses each of “h—,” “d–n” and “a–.” God’s and Jesus’ name are misused five times total (with the former combined with “d–n” twice).

Drug and Alcohol Content

One survivor finds a discarded packet of supplies and is disgruntled that an alcohol bottle has already been emptied.

Other Negative Elements

There have been many deep-sea horror movies made over the years, featuring everything from ancient sea creatures to fallen aliens. Underwater rises from the cinematic depths and takes its place in their midst with all the pitch-black, murky-chum moments you might expect from this genre.

But this pic adds a new contemporary twist to the typical formula. Or rather, it takes something away. Whereas past films took time to introduce us to the underwater crew we would soon see die in drowning gasps of slow dread, Underwater skips exposition altogether and leaps with videogame-like glee into its deadly, high-pressure destruction.

Kristen Stewart works hard to make her character someone we can identify with, giving Norah a balanced mixture of steely-eyed, hard-driving strength and shivering-from-shock-and-cold vulnerability. And we definitely witness self-sacrificial action in this adventure, too.

But those are difficult virtues to fully appreciate in a film that plunges viewers into a breathless, 90-minute sprint, one that’s full of coarse lingo and bloody jump scares.

The result? Underwater is a deep-sea pic … with no depth.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

Latest Reviews

The Long Game

The Greatest Hits

Weekly reviews straight to your inbox.

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘underwater’: film review.

Kristen Stewart and Vincent Cassel play survivors of an endangered deep-sea drilling crew in William Eubank's monster movie 'Underwater.'

By John DeFore

John DeFore

• Share this article on Facebook
• Share this article on Twitter
• Share this article on Flipboard
• Share this article on Email
• Show additional share options
• Share this article on Linkedin
• Share this article on Pinit
• Share this article on Reddit
• Share this article on Tumblr
• Share this article on Whatsapp
• Share this article on Print
• Share this article on Comment

Following up on his 2014 brainteaser The Signal , William Eubank’s Underwater lets viewers know what they’re in for from the start: If its title treatment’s faint echo of Alien doesn’t tip you off (with letters materializing onscreen out of order against a ghostly expanse), a credits sequence heavy on newspaper-headline exposition may remind you of recent Godzilla reboots, in which humanity’s hubris awakened terrible creatures from the deep. Sure, our working-class heroes — survivors of a deep-sea drilling disaster — are fighting against terrifying odds just to get to a structure that won’t crumple under unfathomable water pressure before their oxygen runs out. But this is a creature feature, whose gory jump-scares and icktastic critter design are the reason you’re here. An ensemble led by Kristen Stewart brings credible camaraderie to the scenario without quite matching the vivid chemistry of Alien and its best descendants; with such a tightly packed survival tale ahead of them, though, few viewers will be calling out for more character development.

Related Stories

'damaged' review: not even samuel l. jackson and dramatic scottish setting can freshen up stale serial killer flick, kristen stewart reveals the one person who could convince her to star in a marvel movie.

Stewart plays Norah, a mechanical engineer working more than six miles beneath the ocean’s surface on the deepest drilling operation in history. Alone at the film’s beginning, she speaks to us in a surprisingly pensive voiceover, making elliptical references to a former boyfriend and declarations — “there’s a comfort to cynicism; there’s a lot less to lose” — that don’t sync up with anything to come in the film. No matter: Norah’s about to be jolted from her reverie by a breach in her station’s hull. After a panicked race to find a structurally sound airlock, she realizes hundreds of her crewmates have been killed by the explosive flood.

Release date: Jan 10, 2020

As she and the one other survivor from this part of the station (Mamoudou Athie’s Rodrigo) crawl through rubble searching for others, the film mercilessly amplifies the setting’s inherently claustrophobia-triggering qualities. Gathering soon with their captain ( Vincent Cassel ) and three other survivors ( T.J. Miller , Jessica Henwick and John Gallagher Jr. ), they realize their only option is to get in spacesuit-like deep sea gear, descend further to the ocean floor, and walk out to the main drilling station. As they figure things out, they get their first looks at what’s responsible for weird noises they’re hearing outside — an unknown species originating from suboceanic thermal vents, perhaps, forced out by a drilling-triggered seismic event. Here’s hoping that event didn’t wreck the drilling site as it did this command center.

As they prepare to make the trip, Norah instructs Emily (Henwick), the only other woman in the group, to take off her pants, as they won’t fit in the undersea suit. Presumably, the line was slipped into the script to justify the fact that, later in the film, Stewart will spend multiple scenes running around in just her underwear. But it might draw attention to this contrivance instead: Those exoskeleton-like suits clearly weren’t tailored to fit individual crewmembers, and Miller’s character Paul (the cast’s comic relief, naturally) just reminded us what a big fella he is. How can a suit accommodate his girth, with room left for the stuffed animal he inexplicably carries around, while the much smaller Emily and Norah have to strip down? Grounded in reality or not, a skimpier version of Ellen Ripley’s underwear-action-hero look is one Alien reference this movie could’ve done without.

Eubank maximizes the cold-sweat factor once his characters are on the ocean floor — totally exposed to the monsters they’re hearing, but unable to see them in the sediment-clouded murk. He puts his camera into Norah’s helmet, but films her from the side, emphasizing how trapped she is within; several violent scenes remind us all how horrible it would be if that transparent shell were to crack. Or be cracked.

Eubank rations out the pic’s monsters with skill — lots and lots of “what’s that sound?!” at first, followed by quite effective partial or fleeting glances. But even after we’ve seen the fluidly-moving things in full and at length, the film nicely balances their menace with that of the depths.

In fact, Underwater hints at one point that the ocean is the only thing truly worth fearing here. In a fleeting echo of man-plays-God sci-fi parables of yore, a character describes the monsters as Mother Earth’s vengeance on those who would never stop looking for ways to extract her resources: “We took too much — and now she’s taking back.” Whether on Earth or on ore-rich moons far out in the galaxy, it seems the ones chanting “Drill, baby drill” the loudest are never around when the mine collapses, the rig explodes or a monster shows up to punish their greed.

Production company: Chernin Entertainment Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Cast: Kristen Stewart, T.J. Miller, Jessica Henwick, Vincent Cassel, John Gallagher Jr., Mamoudou Athie Director: William Eubank Screenwriters: Brian Duffield, Adam Cozad Producers: Peter Chernin, Tonia Davis, Jenno Topping Executive producer: Kevin Halloran Director of photography: Bojan Bazelli Production designer: Naaman Marshall Costume designer: Dorotka Sapinska Editors: Brian Berdan, William Hoy, Todd E. Miller Composers: Marco Beltrami, Brandon Roberts Casting director: Angela Demo

Rated PG-13, 94 minutes

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Lori loughlin recalls working with keanu reeves on 1988’s ‘the night before:’ “he’s just a dream”, ‘triangle of sadness’ director ruben östlund proposes requiring a license to use cameras, matthew mcconaughey and kate hudson were “immediately comfortable” on ‘how to lose a guy in 10 days’ set, meet freddy macdonald, the 23-year-old ‘sew torn’ filmmaker who dazzled sxsw, shawn levy says hugh jackman predicted he and ryan reynolds would get along well, box office: ‘civil war’ ignites with $10.8m friday, now on course for $25m-plus opening.

Underwater (2020)

• User Reviews

Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews

• User Ratings
• External Reviews
• Metacritic Reviews
• Full Cast and Crew
• Release Dates
• Official Sites
• Company Credits
• Filming & Production
• Technical Specs
• Plot Summary
• Plot Keywords
• Parents Guide

Did You Know?

• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Soundtracks

Photo & Video

• Photo Gallery
• Trailers and Videos

Related Items

• External Sites

Related lists from IMDb users

Recently Viewed

Underwater Review

“This better not be 20,000-Leagues-Under-The-Sea-shit, man,” says T.J. Miller’s aquatic researcher Paul as he slowly begins to realise there are sea monsters on the loose. If he’d been paying attention to William Eubank’s film from the get-go, poor Paul would have cottoned on much earlier. From the wide spacing in the title design to lights flickering on a seemingly deserted vessel to heroes fighting to stay alive in skimpy underwear, Underwater has Alien , and practically any other creature feature you can think of, coursing through its veins. This isn’t necessarily a problem. A cheap, thrilling B movie — in the vein of Pitch Black , Slither or Ready Or Not — is a welcome sight amongst awards-season seriousness. But Eubank’s film can’t find its own vibe or sense of fun to lift it off the seabed.

For its first half at least, Underwater is a disaster movie. As the tremor from an earthquake (or so it seems) destroys a sub-aqua research facility seven miles beneath the surface, Norah Price (Stewart — her crew-cut peroxide hair and outsized glasses are a mood) runs for her life, chased by a ragged handheld camera, effective and disorientating, locking a door behind her, condemning colleagues to their death but saving many more. She soon meets up with Vincent Cassel’s Captain Lucien, who refuses to leave his ship, nice-guy systems manager Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie), wise guy Paul (Miller), research assistant Emily (Jessica Henwick), who bristles at being called an intern, and operations manager Liam (John Gallagher Jr), whose discerning trait is a beard. Eubank’s M.O. is immersive (or maybe submersive), throwing us in at the deep end with zilch knowledge about the people in peril. There’s a lot in the way of exposition — a reactor is melting down with only 30 minutes to go, a diving suit is running low on oxygen — but little in the way of sharply defined characters or interesting dynamics to spark human interest.

When Lucien decides the survivors should make their way to the safety of an abandoned rig, Underwater falls back on tension-building staples — lots of listening to ominous sounds in empty corridors, scary lost transmissions from surrounding drill sites — until the horror swims up. The first kill is effective but the rest don’t hit the mark — jump moments fall flat, while the pitch blackness of underwater, potentially atmospheric and scary, is just murky and confusing. When the creatures finally turn up, they seem to be designed by ctrl+alt+genericmonster.

Eubank, a cinematographer-turned-director, conjures up helmet cameras, over-used slow motion, the odd telling moment — our heroes wade through the junk food (Cheetos, Moon Pies) of the dead — and perhaps the slowest suit-up montage in action-movie history. The cast have little to work with — at least two of them are dealing with death in their pasts — and for all Stewart’s skill and strength, Norah isn’t the easiest character to root for. To its credit, the film doesn’t exactly adhere to the Final Girl trope, but by then it’s too little, too late.

Screen Rant

Underwater (2020) review: a missable, mediocre sci-fi thriller.

Underwater is a tense and relentless thrill ride at the bottom of the ocean, but lacks any substance, delivering a shallow and boring sci-fi movie.

Ever since the deal for Disney to acquire Fox's movie and TV assets closed last year, the Mouse House has taken over releasing Fox movies that were completed before the deal finalized. One such movie is Underwater , a deep-sea action horror movie that seems like it would've been far more at home on Netflix (or some other streaming service) than as a theatrical release. The fast-paced, sci-fi thriller clocks in at an uncompromising 95-minute runtime, which allows director William Eubank ( Love ) to deliver a quick, if hollow movie. Eubank is working from a script by Brian Duffield ( The Babysitter ) and Adam Cozad ( The Legend of Tarzan ), and a story by Duffield. Underwater is a tense and relentless thrill ride at the bottom of the ocean, but lacks any substance, delivering a shallow and boring sci-fi movie.

The film begins with a credits sequence that's meant to set the stage - with news articles about a deep sea drilling accident and mysterious anomalies - but goes by much too quickly for the viewer to fully understand the world in which they're about to be immersed. This credits sequence has the mentality of a true crime docuseries and from this introduction, it's clear Underwater is a movie that takes itself seriously, and not seriously enough at the same time. Underwater is decidedly not a B-movie creature feature, even though it too often leans on tropes and cliches of the genre. Instead, the movie puts the most focus on the characters' attempts to survive amid an impossible situation, with it being clear they aren't truly aware of what the situation really is. There's some science in this sci-fi thriller, but Underwater seems more preoccupied with delivering a thrilling experience than on anything like story, science or world-building beyond the bare minimum.

Related:  2020 Movie Release Date Calendar

While that would seemingly set the stage for a compelling character piece, Underwater sacrifices character development for action and thrills. The cast of Underwater is led by Kristen Stewart as mechanical engineer Norah, who saves herself and Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie) from the initial effects of the "earthquake" that hits their underwater drilling station. They meet up with fellow survivors, Captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel), Emily (Jessica Henwick), Smith (John Gallagher Jr.) and Paul (T.J. Miller). This group is where Underwater treads most into fun creature feature territory, with both Miller and Gallagher Jr. delivering some comedic relief to break the tension. But these moments don't balance the tension very well, and are mostly at odds with the overly serious scenes of the crew trying to survive. With no escape pods left, the Captain determines they should walk across the ocean floor to another drilling station and try to reach the surface from there.

Stewart is a fine enough lead for what Underwater is going for, which is to put normal people in an incredibly abnormal situation, and Stewart plays a compelling everywoman. Much of the story tension comes from whether Norah and the rest of the surviving crew have the abilities and the determination to do what they need to survive against incredible odds. While that's premise enough for what could be an entertaining survival thriller, Underwater throws in the sci-fi element of deep-sea creatures, though the film still tries to maintain a believability - until it doesn't. But the script for Underwater doesn't give Stewart or her co-stars (who are serviceable enough) much to work with aside from the action scenes as Eubank focuses more on creating the experience with closeups on Stewart's face, and tight camerawork, especially in the underwater scenes. However, some of these scenes border on being unwatchable when the camera is too tight on a character and it's unclear what's happening;  Underwater  uses this too often to employ jump-scare horror. Still, Eubank does deliver on the visceral, suffocating feeling of being trapped at the bottom of the ocean.

Altogether Underwater is a middling movie that spans multiple genres, from sci-fi and thriller to action and horror, and can't seem to focus on any specific one. It's a fine enough theater experience, tense and immersive at its best, frustratingly muddy and confusing at its worst. But while the 95-minute runtime ensures a blisteringly quick adventure, Underwater is still drowning in cliches - including one especially egregious horror cliche that shouldn't still be around in 2020 (even if the writers try to put a new spin on it). The lack of meaningful character development is only highlighted further when Underwater attempts to flesh out its characters, giving them all one-note backstories - if they're given backstories at all. Ultimately, Underwater is too shallow to deliver a meaningful experience.

As a result, even fans of deep-sea horror or thriller movies may want to wait to check this one out when it hits home release - and those not interested could miss it entirely. Underwater plays out like a Netflix original movie, in that it may have had a higher chance of success if it had been released on a streaming service with a lower barrier of entry than the price of a movie theater ticket. It's entertaining enough as something to watch at home alone or with friends, but doesn't provide the level of entertainment expected from a theatrical experience. Underwater isn't a fun popcorn creature feature, but neither is it a compelling character drama. All in all, Underwater sinks - in more ways than one.

Next: Underwater Official Trailer

Underwater  is now playing in U.S. theaters. It is 95 minutes long and rated PG-13 for sci-fi action and terror, and brief strong language.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

Key Release Dates

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Underwater review – Kristen Stewart's soggy, silly monster movie

A much-delayed attempt to resurrect the Alien formula underwater has some effective moments but fails to justify its own existence

D iving into the January release schedule, unofficial dumping ground of studios, can give one a sinking feeling here in the US. After being spoiled by the extravagant riches of awards season, a brief, packed period overflowing with high-quality films crafted with care and precision, we’re then given malformed byproducts, perhaps promising on paper but quite often punishing on screen. Previous years have offered the Matthew McConaughey stinker Serenity, the masochistically unfunny spoof Fifty Shades of Black and, just last week, an entirely unnecessary redo of The Grudge.

Filmed three years ago and finally being unleashed on audiences with minimal fanfare, the Alien-aping sci-fi thriller Underwater is the most frustrating kind of January movie: one that’s almost, kind of, nearly, worth seeing. It’s a good movie that got soggy, turning it into an average one instead, a script with blurred pages, ink seeping into one big murky splurge. The setup is simple, and loosely familiar to genre fans. A crew of aquatic researchers are left in disarray when an earthquake destroys most of their facility. They’re unsure what caused it but there are concerns that the drilling team they work alongside have found something that should have been left buried. You know the deal.

For a while, Underwater’s brisk goofiness is, if anything, a refreshing palate cleanser after the more serious-minded offerings of late. There’s an impressively ominous scene-setter as we glide all the way down, accompanied by an unsettlingly sinister score, and once we’re onboard, we’re thrown straight into the action as our heroine, played by Kristen Stewart , fights to survive a tense sequence of destruction. It continues to move along at a fair lick and while for the most part, it recalls better, smarter examples of the genre, the bare minimum is done well enough. But as the last act comes into view, so does a creeping realisation that, er, that’s all there is because when the formula does allow space for innovation, the script from Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad sticks a bit too closely to well-recycled beats, originated in Alien and never far from our screens since.

When the crew members inevitably start getting picked off, their death scenes, because of the film’s mass-audience-pleasing PG-13 rating, are largely incoherent. At one point a character has to remind someone, and us, that a death actually did just occur. It’s of course entirely possible to construct a film such as this with a lower rating in mind, but the script’s insistence on including theoretically gory moments suggests that a neutering has taken place and sloppy studio tampering has left the movie hopelessly defanged. The three years that it has taken for the film to reach us has aged it in a number of ways but most notably in the decision to cast TJ Miller as comedy support, a tiresome jester who has since been mercifully pushed aside by the industry. He’s especially grating here, spewing unfunny quips to a cast of actors who find it hard to suppress their fatigue.

It has not been a great time for Stewart of late, an actor who had managed, quite brilliantly, to escape the shadow of the Twilight franchise to become an intriguingly unknowable arthouse darling. But her excursions back into the mainstream continue to be ill-advised, and while she tried her best to bring life to Elizabeth Banks’s shoddy Charlie’s Angels script , the film proved to be one of 2019’s biggest flops. She’s decent enough here in a role that mostly requires her to recite technical jargon and fix things while in her underwear, a directorial decision employed so often that it starts to border on creepy. Her character also conforms to the sci-fi rule that dictates that a female lead must also be grieving, but while it added pathos to both Gravity and Arrival, it feels tacked-on here, and a late stage attempt to add emotional resonance sinks fast.

What frustrates me most about Underwater is just how very little it brings to the table. It’s a solid, competently directed regurgitation of an oft-told tale that never manages to justify its existence. With a budget of around $80m, that is not good enough. As I entered the screening I was handed a scrap of paper that implored me not to reveal any of the film’s “surprises and plot twists” and as I left, I was scratching my head trying to figure out what those were supposed to be. The only surprise here is why film-makers are still trying to remake Alien rather than trying to make something new.

Underwater is out in the US on 10 January and in the UK on 31 January.

• Kristen Stewart
• Vincent Cassel
• Horror films
• Science fiction and fantasy films

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

"Sacrifice Under the Deep Blue Sea"

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: Two survivors have to close an undersea safety door to a safe room on a bunch of other people when it becomes clear the other people will not make it.

More Detail:

UNDERWATER is a horror thriller starring Kristen Stewart, who plays a mechanical engineer working on an elaborate underwater drilling operation in the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean that starts falling apart when it’s attacked by some kind of underwater sea monsters. Though somewhat derivative and lacking greatness, UNDERWATER is a pretty intense and scary but redemptive tale of survival and sacrifice that’s marred by frequent foul language and some gruesome deaths.

The movie opens on one of the extensive drilling operation’s living quarters six miles down into the Marianna Trench of the Pacific Ocean, which is the deepest section of all of the oceans on Earth. Norah, a mechanical engineer, is brushing her teeth in a communal restroom. She sees a Daddy Long Legs spider in the sink, and she carefully scoops it up with a paper towel and places it on the tile away from the sink.

After brushing her teeth, Norah goes out into the hall when, suddenly, the walls of the facility behind her start exploding and buckling. She runs down the hall knocking on everyone’s door to wake them up and warn them. However, when she gets to a safer room in a corner section of the facility where a computer nerd named Rodrigo is working, they have to shut the safety door when the whole section behind them collapses onto the other people also trying to get to the room.

Norah and Rodrigo try to make it to the facility’s escape pods. Along the way, they have to shimmy their way through a collapsed section, where they discover another worker, a man named Paul. Eventually, all three of them make it to the escape pod area, where the Captain, Lucien, has already sent out all the available escape pods. Two other workers have made it out alive, Norah’s friend named Liam, and his fiancé, Emily. Liam was her husband’s best friend, but Norah’s husband has died.

Captain Lucien informs them that the facility’s escape submarine and communications have been destroyed. He tells them their only option is to make their way to a nearby transport rig, take the rig to the ocean floor, and don their pressurized diving suits to walk to an abandoned drilling facility called Roebuck a couple miles away. Hopefully, they can get the communications equipment there working and maybe even find some available escape pods.

However, as they start their perilous journey, they begin to realize they aren’t alone, that something is stalking them as they make their way to the transport rig. Will any of them survive?

UNDERWATER is an intense, scary undersea horror thriller. Eventually, it also becomes a monster movie. Though it’s a little too reminiscent of the classic original ALIEN movie and doesn’t have quite the same panache, it manages to scare up some unique chills and thrills. That said, a big problem with the movie is that viewers never quite get a good look at the monsters attacking the undersea heroes.

The good news, though, is that UNDERWATER turns out to be both a scary adventure tale of survival and a redemptive story of sacrifice. The little band of undersea heroes starts looking out for one another and makes superhuman efforts to safe their companions, to the point of being willing to sacrifice their own lives.

However, UNDERWATER has lots of foul language and a couple gruesome deaths. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for this content and the scares generated by the story.

Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.

What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.

You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.

Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.