Kristen Stewart's Bold 2020 Sci-Fi Horror Movie Is A Gem Streaming On Prime Video

William Eubank's 2020 sci-fi horror film "Underwater" is one of the most claustrophobic movies ever made this side of "Buried," as you'll quickly discover upon firing it up on Prime Video (where it's currently streaming). For those unfamiliar, "Buried" (itself a Roger Ebert favorite that audiences mostly ignored) centers on a man (Ryan Reynolds) who's been buried alive and is set entirely inside of a coffin. "Underwater," on the other hand, takes place, well, underwater, in a high-tech research facility (the Kepler 822) deep in the Mariana Trench in the year 2050.

Right at the beginning of the flick, some kind of earthquake hits the station, leaving it damaged and requiring evacuation. A mechanical engineer named Norah (Kristen Stewart) then spends the bulk of the movie traversing the station's broken hallways and making a deep underwater foot trek (wearing a super-advanced scuba suit as she wanders through the murky darkness).

There's not much in the way of plot or non-functional dialogue in "Underwater." It's all gasping and giving instructions and avoiding death. Its story is about solitude. Well, that and unusual Lovecraftian creatures. Dagon-like humanoid fish beasties swim around in the mysterious ocean depths, wreaking hungry demonic havoc on the film's protagonists. The creatures are cool and scary, and they try more than once (sometimes successfully) to swallow the movie's human characters. 

"Underwater" co-stars Vincet Cassel as the station's captain, Jessica Henwick as the station biologist, John Gallagher Jr. as the engineer, and Mamoudou Athie as another crewmate. They all take turns discovering one another after the disaster, and finding the best ways to survive. The "canceled" T.J. Miller also appears in "Underwater," but don't worry, you won't have to suffer his presence for too long.

The screenplay for "Underwater," credited to Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad, is not expressly based on any H.P. Lovecraft stories, but it certainly takes place within Lovecraft's extended mythos. Those unfamiliar with the author should know that he invented an entire theogony of ancient gods that are so large and powerful, so baffling and alien, they cannot be contained by the human mind. Many of Lovecraft's gods came from beneath the sea, with immortal fish-like men called the Deep Ones first appearing in the 1931 novella "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." From the look of it, the creatives behind "Underwater" were trying to make Deep Ones.

The horrendous Cthulhu, one of the central Lovecraft uber-gods, is also an ocean monster, so you'll definitely want to keep your eyes peeled for him in "Underwater." He's part of what makes this film one of the best Lovecraftian movies of all time.

The actual story of "Underwater" is rather trim, focusing more on survival than complex character development. Norah is faced with some horrible things, but none of the movie's characters have any significant backstories that need to be resolved. "Underwater" is a disaster film through and through. If it's about anything, it's an environmental cautionary tale. If we drill too deep into unknown parts of the oceans, we invite the ineffable, fish-like horrors to swallow us alive. The scientists we follow aren't bad people, of course. They didn't do anything wrong as individuals. It is humanity at large who is to blame. We didn't appreciate that the planet doesn't belong to us, as we are only caretakers until the indifferent gods return.

"Underwater," it should be noted, was a January release. Some in the film punditry fields refer to the first month of the year as a dumping round, acknowledging that studios tend to roll out their chaff during the post-Oscar rush of December. "Underwater," in being a not-very-complex January monster movie, didn't receive great notices despite the presence of a star like Kristen Stewart. It only has a middling 48% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and even Alonso Duralde's positive review for "Breakfast All Day" admitted that it's "kind of redundant." 

Brian Tallerico was more positive, though, giving the film three stars (out of four) in his review for RogerEbert.com. He deemed it a "no-nonsense B-movie" in a complimentary fashion, adding that it's "a lean and mean film that gets you into its action instantly and then doesn't release the pressure until the ending." Tallerico also loved that "Underwater" reads like a mash-up between "The Poseidon Adventure" and an old-timey monster movie, deftly combining two genres he loves. "I'm a fan of when a B-movie really goes for it," he wrote, "and there are a few beats in this one's final scenes that are impressively ambitious." For what it's worth, Chris Evangelista was more or less equally favorable to "Underwater" in his review. 

Sadly, "Underwater" bombed, failing to come anywhere near to recouping its reported $65 million budget at the box office. It was all the more disappointing arriving on the heels of William Eubank's 2014 directorial effort "The Signal," which suggested he had a lot of promise. So, if you've never seen it before, now's a great time to change that by streaming it on Prime Video.