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“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.

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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

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

A crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep sea drilling company try to get to safety after a mysterious earthquake devastates their deepwater research and drilling facility located at ... Read all A crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep sea drilling company try to get to safety after a mysterious earthquake devastates their deepwater research and drilling facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. A crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep sea drilling company try to get to safety after a mysterious earthquake devastates their deepwater research and drilling facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

• William Eubank
• Brian Duffield
• Kristen Stewart
• Vincent Cassel
• Mamoudou Athie
• 1.2K User reviews
• 278 Critic reviews
• 48 Metascore
• 1 win & 5 nominations

• Norah Price

• Captain Lucien

• Rodrigo Nagenda

• Emily Haversham

• Poseidon Patty
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Actors wore airtight suits for the underwater scenes, making it difficult to hear the director's commands. Each suit weighed about 140 lbs (63 kg).
• Goofs During the opening title sequence, a typo can be seen, twice, where a portion of the station's blueprints is labeled "BOYANCY COMPENASATORS"

Norah Price : There are things will happen and make you feel powerless, and make you feel insignificant, but that's it. There are just feelings. and sometimes you have to stop feeling, and start doing.

• Crazy credits Just before the ending credits begin a news appears on the screen about the two survivors of the accident and a date is written on top "Sunday, August 7, 2050" which means the film is set in the year 2050. later on as the news continues another date is also visible "August 12, 2050".
• Connections Featured in Chris Stuckmann Movie Reviews: Underwater (2020)
• Soundtracks SpongeBob SquarePants Theme Written by Derek Drymon , Mark Harrison , Stephen Hillenburg and Blaise Smith Performed by Avril Lavigne Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

User reviews 1.2K

• Jan 10, 2020
• How long is Underwater? Powered by Alexa
• What is the song featured at the end of the movie at the beginning of the credits?
• Why is the Spongebob Squarepants theme song listed in the credits? When was it in the movie?
• January 10, 2020 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Louisiana, USA (Studio)
• Chernin Entertainment
• TSG Entertainment
• Twentieth Century Fox
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $80,000,000 (estimated)
• $17,291,078
• Jan 12, 2020
• $40,882,928

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 35 minutes
• Dolby Atmos

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‘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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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‘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

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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.

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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

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‘Underwater’ Review: Kristen Stewart Anchors a Shallow but Satisfying Creature Feature

David ehrlich.

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A shallow but satisfying creature feature that splits the difference between classic disaster movies and Lovecraftian horror, William Eubank ’s “ Underwater ” is a film out of its time. For one thing, it was shot almost three years ago, back when bonafide disaster artist T.J. Miller was still vaguely cast-able (i.e. before he became so toxic that Mucinex fired him as the company’s spokes-snot ). For another, it’s an expensive, original, multiplex-ready B-movie in an era when virtually anything with an $80 million budget has to be about superheroes or new subscribers. In fact, the project’s anachronistic nature is so pronounced that even its profoundly screwed characters can sense it bubbling up around them.

“Underwater” is gasping for air from the moment it starts. Set almost seven miles below the ocean surface aboard a deep-sea drilling complex that’s exclusively populated by hot millennials, the movie dives right into the abyss with nary a hint of set-up. At its center is Norah ( Kristen Stewart ), a mechanic at the bottom of the world. Sporting a short-cropped blonde dye that illuminates the screen with Lori Petty vibes, the actress gives Norah such palpable anxiety that the movie is never able to normalize its nightmare scenario; she’s just as terrified (if a bit more capable) as any of us would be down there, and that unfiltered vulnerability allows “Underwater” to remain scary during even its silliest moments. Spending most of her scenes in the coiled, rattlesnake-like defensive crouch that she’s perfected in various indies over the last few years, Stewart adds much-needed detail to a one-dimensional role. All we know for sure about Norah is that no one takes a job in hell unless they’re hiding from something.

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“On the ocean floor, you lose all sense of time,” she tells us in the voiceover narration that Adam Cozad and Brian Duffield use to plug the holes in their seaworthy script. But for Norah, who’s only kept afloat by cynicism and self-sacrifice, that feeling of oblivion might be more of a feature than a bug. Who is she running from? What is her employer hoping to find down there? Why don’t movies like this still let us spend 40 minutes chilling with Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton before the shit hits the fan?

There are definitive answers to at least two of those three questions, but don’t hold your breath waiting for them to arrive. Instead, brace for a dissonant symphony of ominous creaks, mysterious animal noises, and sudden THUNKS! like the one that sends 90 zillion pounds of Pacific Ocean water flooding into Norah’s sealab bathroom; the movie is hardly five minutes old before its shaky heroine has escaped certain death, sacrificed a handful of her hapless colleagues, and found herself trapped in the single most hostile environment you can find on planet Earth. “Underwater” is paced at a relentless clip that doesn’t give you a chance to think, let alone get bored. 

The opening credits contain some very obvious clues that the flooding might have been caused by “anomalies” of some kind, and hard evidence of some “‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ shit” (as Miller’s typically buffoonish character describes it) comes soon after Norah meets up with a small group of survivors. Their ranks include a tortured captain (tough guy Vincent Cassel acting against type), a winsome engineer played by the ever-dependable John Gallagher Jr., and a mild-mannered staffer named Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie, the only black cast member in a relatively old-fashioned horror movie that can sometimes be too attached to outmoded genre tropes). Everyone is just red meat waiting for the slaughter, but the pedigree of this ensemble is strong enough to make you suspend disbelief when they strap themselves into massive armored suits, step into the void, and start getting mauled to death one well-telegraphed jump-scare at a time. 

If the film’s plot couldn’t be any more predictable, its claustrophobic atmosphere and nightmare mechanics help keep things afloat. A nervous ruin of flooded hallways, calm voice alarms, and thin glass that’s buried in enough ocean to pop a human skull like a pimple, the imploding Kepler Station is a marvelous backdrop for blockbuster schadenfreude. The sad bastards of “Underwater” are boned in such a complete and visceral way that the movie can practically coast on the power of its circumstances — and that’s before Eubank introduces gliding CG beasties into the mix.

In fact, things are so grim down there that the film is often at a loss to explain how any of its characters are still alive. Several of the most harrowing scenes simply end with a blunt cut to black, only for the action to resume a few moments later with the lucky survivors having magically arrived at their next destination. 

By the third time that happens, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the movie is being guided along rails like a theme park ride; while the story evokes everything from “Alien” and “The Abyss” to “Sphere” and “The Descent,” the raw functionality of its telling ultimately positions “Underwater” closer to Disneyland’s “Tower of Terror” than anything else (and thanks to Disney’s recent acquisition of 20th Century Fox, this is technically a Disney joint). It’s as if Eubanks’ film only has 90 minutes of oxygen in the tank and needs to reach the surface by any means necessary, no matter how many tantalizing ideas it leaves unexplored.

Spurred on by its murky spectacle — and a third-act twist that raises the stakes in a very enjoyable way — “Underwater” always seems like it’s about to drown in its own narrative disinterest, and yet it somehow finds a way to keep moving forward. Sure, a hilarious amount of information is dumped into the closing credits. And yes, the movie is so eager to end things that it hurriedly settles for the first moral it can find (single people don’t deserve to live). And, most disconcerting of all, it does leave you with the dark feeling that perhaps “Underwater” should have been connected to a cinematic universe of some kind, if only because the margins don’t make sense for Disney to keep making disposable one-offs like this. If ever a movie should have secretly been a “Cloverfield” project, this is it. 

But the monsters are gnarly, the sets and effects are spectacular chum for the imagination, and the cast is able to elevate a damp programmer into a dizzy genre pleasure. “Underwater” is fun even when you can’t fathom what must have happened behind the scenes during post-production, and it’s scary enough to make James Cameron look in the rear-view mirror of his sub the next time he’s digging around on the ocean floor. Once upon a time, all a movie had to do was make people afraid to go in the water. Sadly, times have changed.

Disney will release “Underwater” in theaters on January 10.

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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.

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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 .

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• Parents say (9)
• Kids say (18)

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 : May 7, 2024

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.

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47 Meters Down

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

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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.

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Underwater (2020) is fantastic sci-fi/horror

I watched Underwater last night, as horror/sci-fi is my absolute favorite blend. I was bracing for it to be so-so as the reviews were tepid, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well made and genuinely exciting the movie ended up being. Cool tech, unique setting, and great performances. Plus, no spoilers, but the movie has a secret connection to one of my favorite horror mythologies that, according to the director, is completely intentional. If you like horror/sci-fi give this one a watch.

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‘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.

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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.

Underwater Entertains but Doesn’t Have Much Depth

Kristen Stewart stars in a film that dares to ask the chilling question, “What if you were underwater and something really bad happened?”

A deep-sea-diver movie is a close cousin to the greatest cinematic subgenre of all—the astronaut movie. The aesthetics are basically identical: Both rely on character actors decked out in chunky exploration suits, fumbling their way through postindustrial corridors while contending with loudly bleeping alerts from stern computer voices. Most important, both are set in harsh environments whose dangers are all the scarier for being unknown. William Eubank’s damp new horror film, Underwater , has all of those ingredients, and their presence was just enough to keep me entertained through a fundamentally silly 95 minutes at the theater.

Underwater could aptly be called Tunnel , given how much of it takes place in a series of anonymous tubes, but the existing title says all you need to know about the premise. This is a film that dares to ask the chilling question, “What if you were underwater and something really bad happened?” Norah Price (Kristen Stewart) is a mechanic living in a deep-sea base several miles under the ocean, where a faceless corporation has decided to drill deep into the Earth’s crust for reasons that are never quite specified. Plot-wise, it doesn’t matter, because Norah’s life as a subaquatic grunt is immediately disrupted. Every doohickey near her mysteriously explodes, and the undersea station starts flooding, leaving Norah and the other sweaty survivors to find their way to safety while being besieged by a mysterious force.

Stewart, sporting a blonde buzz cut and an inimitable glare, is her usual charming and offbeat self in the lead role; she’s a nice change of pace from the grumbly alpha male who typically heads up this kind of B-movie. The talented ensemble includes Jessica Henwick, John Gallagher Jr., and Vincent Cassel (one of cinema’s greatest weasels, here cast against type as the decent captain of whatever mission this team is on). It also, regrettably, features T. J. Miller, whose comic stylings had already grown very stale before he was accused of assault and sexual misconduct . (He has denied the allegations against him.) His presence here can be chalked up to the fact that Underwater was filmed almost three years ago, but that doesn’t make his penchant for agitated, smarmy line-readings any less exhausting.

Almost all of the dialogue in Underwater is inscrutable, because the sound mix is dominated by ominous groans and bangs as well as the occasional shrieking jump scare. There’s no need for narrative coherence, just technobabble nods at whatever the next task is—turning on backup power, or pressurizing the sea suits, or trudging across the ocean floor toward an escape pod. Eubank, whose past efforts include the small-budget indies Love and The Signal , finds a couple of inventive ways to kill off characters, and the eventual reveal of what’s been causing all the chaos (spoiler alert: It has tentacles and claws) is appropriately ghastly.

The paragon of this kind of movie (mid-budgeted sci-fi thriller in which a talented cast is picked off one by one) is Danny Boyle’s 2007 masterpiece Sunshine , a grim and quietly influential space-mission yarn. Underwater never rises to those heights, but it’s not bad for a project released in early January, when studios tend to discard critic-proof genre debris following the Christmas glut. Still, I could have done with a little more context for what, exactly, is going on at the bottom of the Pacific. The design elements of Underwater are obviously influenced by Alien , the film that introduced the rather revolutionary concept of space travel as a mundane, blue-collar job. While Underwater ’s script (by Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad) makes clear that its characters are under a similar capitalist yoke, it mostly skirts past the creepier implications of what their employers are trying to accomplish by drilling deep into the planet.

A more coherent message might give Underwater more punch, but the action never slows down enough for it to get that cerebral. There’s always an emergency depressurization to confront, or a collapsed hallway to navigate, with a toothy monster possibly lurking around the corner. If not for the unusual setting and Stewart’s unique star presence, Underwater might feel completely anonymous. Fortunately, all that H 2 O suffices to give this goofy trifle a memorable sense of atmosphere.

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Stephen King Praises Major 2024 Action-Comedy After $400M Box Office Run

10 best improvised mcu moments that weren't in the script, terminator 2's time travel creates a paradox that's been unfixable for 33 years.

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!

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Best Shark Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

You’re gonna need a bigger screen. But that’s only if you want to take in the full awesome glory of earth’s bitiest avenger: the shark! It’s the only apex predator we humans have cleared time from our busy schedule to pay humble tribute to (we’ve certainly never heard of Sperm Whale Week), Rotten Tomatoes likewise took the time to put together our list of the best shark movies (and the worst) ever — all ranked by Tomatometer.

Our love/hate cinematic relationship with sharks began with directing legend Samuel Fuller and his aptly titled Shark! in 1969, a movie which effectively killed his career for a decade, until 1980’s The Big Red One . Here was a lesson most people would take wisdom from (sharks, even the ones you make up, are not to be trifled with), but it takes a certain cavalier breed to make it as a director, forging ahead where others spectacularly failed.

Enter Steven Spielberg. His 1975 masterpiece Jaws , infamous in almost destroying the young auteur mentally and professionally, would become the first-ever blockbuster. It buoyed the summer season out of the doldrums and turned it into a big-budget movie destination, while instilling a real fear of deep water for a whole generation. Recently, we’ve added forty new reviews and updated its Tomatometer score!

It’s been open season for shark movies in Hollywood ever since, and in the ensuing decades we’ve gotten camp classics ( Sharknado !), modern hits ( The Shallows !), the lovable ( Deep Blue Sea !), and the very much not-so ( Ghost Shark !). Now that we’re all chums caught up on some fishy history, continue on to see every shark movie ever that chomped up a Tomatometer! — Alex Vo

Jaws (1975) 97%

Playing With Sharks (2021) 96%

Kon-Tiki (2012) 83%

The Shallows (2016) 79%

Sharkwater (2006) 79%

Sharkwater Extinction (2018) 100%

After the Bite (2023) 100%

The Reef (2010) 79%

Sharknado (2013) 77%

Sharks (2004) 75%

Open Water (2003) 71%

The Reef: Stalked (2022) 68%

Jaws 2 (1978) 59%

Under Paris (2024) 63%

Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014) 61%

Deep Blue Sea (1999) 60%

47 Meters Down (2017) 53%

Sharktopus (2010) 50%

The Meg (2018) 47%

Open Water 2: Adrift (2006) 45%

Something in the Water (2024) 45%

Bait (2012) 44%

47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) 44%

Great White (2021) 43%

Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002) 43%

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015) 36%

Shark Tale (2004) 35%

No Way Up (2024) 36%

Shark Bait (2022) 30%

Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017) 30%

Ghost Shark (2013) 29%

The Black Demon (2023) 28%

The Last Sharknado: It's About Time (2018) 27%

Meg 2: The Trench (2023) 27%

Shark Night (2011) 19%

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) 19%

The Requin (2022) 19%

Maneater (2022) 17%

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (2016) 17%

Sharknado: The 4th Awakens (2016) 14%

Jaws III (1983) 11%

Jaws the Revenge (1987) 2%

Shark Attack (1999) 0%

Dark Tide (2012) 0%

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Underwater | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

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Underwater Exclusive: Call The Mover Extended Scene

Extended/deleted scenes, alternate ending, real bunny montage, making underwater, audio commentary by william eubank, jared purrington and phil gawthorne, 1 hr 34 min, theatrical trailer, rotten tomatoes® score.

[The monsters are] revealed a bit too early; the impact of the finale is somewhat lessened by the fact that we know what the monsters look like well before the final showdown.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Additional Info

• Genre : Horror, Sci-Fi, Action
• Release Date : January 8, 2020
• Languages : English
• Captions : English, Spanish
• Audio Format : 5.1

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