Movie Review: 'Underwater' is Not the Movie You Think It Is

Underwater stars Kristen Stewart as Norah Price, an engineer on an underwater oil rig. Norah is having a rather mundane night off when she exits a locker room to find a leaking roof. A leaking roof on a rig on the bottom of the ocean is a very bad thing and Norah recognizes trouble right away. She begins banging on doors trying to raise the rest of the crew, but she’s too late, explosions are happening and Norah and only one other employee are able to make it to safety.

The safety of Norah and her fellow employee, Rodrigo (Mamadou Athie), is not assured and they must make a claustrophobic climb over rubble to get to the escape pods that are located not far away. Along the way, Norah and Rodrigo uncover Paul (T.J Miller) covered in rubble. They rescue Paul and he joins them on the perilous crawl toward the pods. Unfortunately, the pods are gone when they arrive.

At the escape area, our protagonists find the rig captain, Captain Lucien (Vincent Cassel). The captain leads them to the command center where the pilot, Liam (John Gallagher Jr) and intern Emily (Jessica Henwick) are waiting. Captain Lucien has one last ditch and dangerous plan. The survivors must cross the bottom of the ocean in mechanical diving suits to get to a decommissioned rig that still has escape pods.

There is a twist in Underwater and I won’t spoil it here though the marketing may have given it away. I loved the idea without the twist and the execution of the twist was pretty good. Director William Eubank directs Underwater with unexpected deftness and a strong sense of tension and menace. I say unexpected only because everything I had seen of Underwater and read about the movie made it appear to be a potential disaster.

Underwater was shot all the way back in 2017 and put on the shelf until after the Fox-Disney merger deal was completed. Normally, when a movie is shelved like that, it’s because the movie is a disaster that the producers are looking to offload in January to get it off the books. Underwater is not a disaster. In a genuine rarity, Underwater was legitimately shelved due to business and not quality concerns.

I can say that with certainty because Underwater is a really good movie. The direction is tense and gripping. Early scenes exploit the fear of confined spaces that I along with millions of others suffer from. I was gasping for breath as the protagonists, led by Stewart’s charismatic and sympathetic Norah, squeezed through tight spaces inside the collapsing rig. The cinematography, especially the tight close-ups may appear to be a little rudimentary, but it worked on me.

Kristen Stewart has gotten a bad rap over the years for her involvement in the Twilight movies. That’s a shame because she is a wonderful actress who I find to be wildly compelling and intriguing. There is something in Stewart’s manner that gives her authenticity in nearly every role she takes on. I bought in immediately as Stewart demonstrated Norah’s capabilities and vulnerabilities. Minimal dialogue is used to layer in a sympathetic backstory that serves to make Norah even more compelling.

The rest of the cast is… fine. Matthew Cassel is rather dead-eyed throughout Underwater but not to a distracting degree. He cares just enough to make it work. T.J Miller, now rather persona non-grata for his notable negative qualities, is killed in a fashion that is very satisfying. I certainly don’t wish to see Miller die in reality but there is a wonderful unintended schadenfreude in watching Miller die an excruciating death.

That unintended appeal aside, Underwater is a really exciting underwater thriller. The twist, for a lack of a better description, makes the proceedings a little hokey at times, the movie might work just as well without it, but in the end it adds just the right touch of action and suspense when the movie needs it. The ending honestly moved me and I really bought into the final moments. The satisfying ending caps a movie that caught me off guard by overcoming my unfair preconceptions.