UNDERWATER
***
Dir: William Eubank (12A, 95 mins)
An alien clone set on the seabed, Underwater does have some effective moments and well-staged action but ultimately feels constrained by its 12A rating, no doubt a result of studio interference and lack of satisfying new ideas. Kristen Stewart plays Norah, a deep-sea engineer who, along with a predictably ragtag group of co-workers, is drilling six miles beneath the ocean. A seismic event wrecks their rig and kills the majority of the crew, leaving Stewart, captain Vincent Cassel, annoying ‘comic’ relief T.J. Miller, brainy scientist Jessica Henwick and the even more sketchily drawn John Gallagher Jr. the task of walking out onto the seabed to reach safety in a main drilling station. Obviously, the seismic incident has unleashed something else from geothermic vents and, in a series of claustrophobic moments, the underwritten characters are confronted by what they were not meant to have unleashed. Sat on the shelf for years before release, this rips off Alien, down to its unnecessary underpants sequences, but is a competent creature feature with the occasional flourish.
Opens Feb 7
[wpdevart_youtube]Rszr56AH3Co[/wpdevart_youtube]