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.

Content Caution

HeavyKids
MediumTeens
LightAdults

Credits

In Theaters

Cast

Home Release Date

Director

Distributor

Reviewer

Bob Hoose

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

None.

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

None.

Conclusion

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.

The Plugged In Show logo
Elevate family time with our parent-friendly entertainment reviews! The Plugged In Podcast has in-depth conversations on the latest movies, video games, social media and more.
Bob Hoose

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.