When a picture is released in January featuring a big star minus any publicity, you know you’re in for a stinkeroo, and Kristin Stewart’s waterlogged Alien redux Underwater, the latest in a long line of creature features aping Ridley Scott’s 1979 suspense classic minus its artistry, is a hard pass.
Sitting on the shelf for three years—gee, wonder why—this expensively mounted disappointment has one thing going for it, and that’s its star, who slogs her way through the B-movie proceedings valiantly while the movie around her can’t muster a single original idea. Perhaps Stewart felt this would be an action role ala’ Sigourney Weaver to catapult her back to commercial success, but director William Eubank is so concerned with creature effects that she hasn’t got much to do.
We first meet engineer Norah (Stewart) sitting on the bathroom floor of a large-scale undersea drilling station which is, naturally, at the ocean’s deepest spot, an otherworldly spot called the Mariana Trench, a locale ripe for a monstrous intrusion. Norah spots a pesky spider and allows it to live—even in the deepest, darkest regions, life and compassion find a way. Stewart, blonde-coiffed and speaking in voice over, is typically magnetic.
Suddenly, an explosion rocks the station and we get one of those typical running, shaking, flickering lights, crumpling cave-ins—you get the idea. But what has caused such duress? At any rate, the station is no longer a fit accommodation for the rest of the mission, so the skeleton crew must strike out on the bottom of the sea, hiking to safety at the next outpost. At least it wasn’t another unknown distress call.
The crew includes Vincent Cassel as the nameless “Captain,” though otherwise the actors are interchangeable. Their bottom of the sea trek presents some fun in how the navigate both their safety suits as well as the long hike in dark water, with little air and the small matter of a potential creature stalking them at each turn.
To its credit, Underwater manages to produce a few diverting set-pieces and the production design, particularly when the monster is unveiled, is impressive in its amorphous visage and enjoyably mounted. But it is never truly scary. Perhaps its because there seems little at stake with the exception of the generic lead characters. Without its Alien allusions and star, there’s nothing to hang onto here – no deeper philosophical implications, little character development and an absence of genuine scares.
1 1/2 stars.
