UNDERWATER (Cthulhu Awakens) EXPLORED

[Music] [Music] hey guys what's happening nirrti with film comics explained and is requested today we'll be exploring William Eubanks survival horror film underwater starring vincent cassell and Kristen Stewart borrowing the narrative structure of the 1979 classic alien and taking visual cues from 80s sci-fi horror films Leviathan and the abyss underwater is a tense rollercoaster ride that follows a crew trying to escape the doomed fate of their crumbling underwater station not only must they contend with the immense pressures of miles of sea water above them but the group soon find themselves encountering Lovecraftian Horace from the depths that begin to pick them off one by one this leads us to one of the most important inspirations for the movie HP Lovecraft's 1928 short story the Call of Cthulhu told in three chapters by the narrator the story chronicles the journey of a young man trying to find meaning in his late uncle's research as the story unfolds the narrator pieces together a collection of reports and manuscripts detailing encounters mankind has had with Cthulhu is denizens along with the cults that desire to wake him from his eternal slumber in fact the film borrows so much of its story from Lovecraft that the opening paragraph of the Call of Cthulhu pretty much sums up underwater perfectly the most merciful thing in the world I think is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents we live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity and it was not meant that we should forage far the sciences each straining intoned direction have hitherto harmed as little but someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality and a far frightful position therein that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age filmed in 2017 underwater was another victim at the Disney twentieth century-fox merger which explained why the film wasn't released until January of this year a month where most production companies dropped films on the market they don't have much confidence in knowing all of this and the fact that most films cut from the same cloth as alien rarely managed to capture the cleverness and suspense of the 70s I was pretty skeptical going into the movie but I have to admit that although the film has some faults much of which will be covered later in this video it's actually a thrilling survival horror with a few neat surprises focusing on Kristen Stewart's Nora a mechanical engineer working for the dubious teen industries mining company the film begins with a mysterious earthquake on the Mariana Trench that critically damages the underwater mining station kepler-22 and tracks Laura's attempts to lead the few survivors that were left to safety due to the internal explosions inside the Keppler which devastated its structural integrity and set the thermonuclear rig on its way to annihilation and with no means of communicating with the surface the group are forced to make the perilous track down to the ocean floor towards the last remaining escape pods reminiscent of ridley scott and Jimmy Cameron's use of slow tracking shots to keep us engaged as we're shown around the Nostromo and the Sulaco in the alien series underwater begins with a gradual descent down the length of the deep-sea station before quickly showing us around the crew quarters we then introduced to Nora who tells us that working under such depths for months at a time along with thoughts about her late fiance was beginning to take a toll on her mind laura describes her lover as a glass-half-full optimistic kind of guy who helped her see the beauty in life and explained how his passing was a catalyst for her to return back toward her old defeatist ways the memoir like narration of her innermost thought is a nice callback to the manuscripts of survivors found in the call of cthulhu but before we could learn anything more about our main character earthquakes on the ocean floor triggers station wide explosions prompting the engineer to run towards the freight elevator as the walls of the station caved in around her these tremors initially thought to have been the result of instability on the ocean floor were actually caused by Cthulhu awakening from his slumber in fact if you turn the volume up moments before the explosions you can actually hear the deafened noise of a monster rumbling and giant footsteps in the distance these murmurs from the Lord God are also heard on a number of occasions later in the film giving us a taste of what was to come managing to make it to the lift with our colleague Roderigo Nora makes the difficult choice of having to close the doors on to other co-workers trying to outrun the depressurization behind them the two then go down to the lower levels and find fellow survivors Paul captain at the Keppler Lucian who had decided to stay on the doop station while Lucien's choice to stay on the Keppler was partly motivated by the maritime tradition of a cap that not leaving his vessel the dominant reason was guilt as he knew that he was partly to blame for the catastrophe prior to becoming captain of the Keppler station Lucian was a ranking officer on board its predecessor the Shepherd which teen had to abandon due to a similar catastrophe in the past with the deaths covered up by the company his accidents that were typical of work in high-pressure environments the new Keppler station was built a mile away and picked up where the company had left off together Nora Rodrigo Paul and Lucian mega to the control base and find the last of the survivors on the Keppler Station resident biologist Emily and engineer Liam who secretly were lovers the duo revealed that although they'd been unsuccessful in their efforts to contact Ian's control based on the surface they had managed to recover an audio SOS file but when they play it the group hear the disturbing screams of fallen crewmembers being attacked the horrific sounds coupled with the imminent destruction of the Keppler prompts the team of six to make the perilous 1 mile journey down to the ocean floor before proceeding a further mile in the darkness towards the Roebuck trill which housed the last of the escape pods unfortunately for rodrigo as they make their way down the freight elevator is defective helmets and pressure suit implodes under the immense pressure when the remaining 5 begin their descent a distress signal believed to be from an escape pod lures Sam and Paul towards a body in the rubble that was being consumed by a small creature although the pair immediately attacked Liam kills the Beast enabling Emily to examine it and determine that they'd stumbled upon a new species as the crew begin debating whether or not the specimen was an adult or an infant they hear the aggravated thumps of its family outside confirming that it was indeed a baby and that its parents were now understandably pissed off further adding to their dilemma when the remaining survivors begin their walk to the Roebuck the Keppler explodes from above hurling debris down as the humanoid creatures surveyed them from a distance angered by the murder of one of their young and seeking revenge for this transgression the monsters relentlessly hunt the group down and successfully managed to kill Paul while this was the first time that we see these monsters in the flesh their existence is suggested to its in the diving station with a mural depicting deep-sea divers being pulled down to the depths by humanoid creatures this indicated that although nobody really knew what they were enough of the crew had seen or heard about them that both the Kepler and Shepard stations began developing an in-house mythology around them with their numbers reduced the crew continued on across the ocean floor when another creature drags Liam away into a cave connected to the old Shepard station Lucian heads in after him and manages to get Liam back to safety but he and Nora then dragged away by the creature forcing the captain to sacrifice himself despair Nora from the rapid change and pressure they were being subjected to northen enters the abandoned Shepard station and recovers a new diving suit before making her way towards the Roebuck which he finds Liam passed out and Emily screaming in terror beside him after helping the distraught Emily regain her sanity Nora leads the remaining survivors towards the robot where they encounter a nest of the humanoid creatures hibernating next to the entrance despite their efforts to quietly sneak past them the sound of an oxygen alarm in Emily's suit waits one of them are the powerful creature then starts attacking Nora and even swallows her halt prompting the engineer to shoot her way out with a flare gun this victory however is short-lived as the tip of the Roebuck trail housing the creatures is pulled away by the horrendous mighty Cthulhu the progenitor and master of the aquatic species that was hunting the crew down in the expansive mythos created by Lovecraft Cthulhu is characterized as the priest and leader of the old once a species of gods that came to Earth from the stars before human life arose although the old ones went dormant and their City slipped under the Earth's crust beneath the Pacific Ocean we're told that when the conditions were right the city would rise and Cthulhu would awaken to rule the world once again a prophecy that was coming into fruition before the eyes of Nora despite the work of his followers to bring him back to the world in the Call of Cthulhu the monster is accidentally released from his underground Kingdom by a band of sailors that stumbled on a mysterious portal to his home underwater updates this and instead of sailors it's implied that Nora and her crew unwittingly released Cthulhu through their deep-sea mining after finally making it to the Roebuck with Emily and Liam Nora heroically sacrifices herself by giving the last to working escape pots to the lovers with Emily and Liam's ascent up to the surface now threatened by the pursuit of Cthulhu and his aquatic children Nora goes one step further by overloading the station's power cores resulting in a thermo nuclear meltdown that kills Nora and the creatures enabling the lovers to safely make it to the surface this ending though a little different is taken directly from your Hansen's confrontation in the last chapter of the short story after losing most of his crew to Cthulhu in it the Sailor recounts how he bravely guided his ship into the creatures head enabling him to get away but it's important to note that despite the damage done to the monster by the Sailor it's revealed that Cthulhu had begun regenerating himself Cthulhu still lives too I suppose again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the Sun was young his accursed city is sunken once more he must have been trapped by the sinking whilst within his black abyss or else the world would by now be screaming with frightened frenzy who knows the end what has risen may sink and what his sunk may rise given William Eubanks confirmation that the monster at the end of his film was indeed Cthulhu and with the end credits series revealing the teen industries had decided to open yet another drilling station on the Mariana Trench I think it's safe to say that the god was still alive waiting for another opportunity to spread madness and destruction upon the world Oh someone I have to admit that all the technical aspects of this film are executed perfectly from the direction Acting cinematography musical score to the creepy sound design all working in unison to capture a claustrophobic environment of deep sea terror visually this film is a treat armed with impressive set pieces badass suits detailed sets and creature designs though admittedly not wholly original that made me feel like a kid watching my favorite be great science-fiction horror films but I couldn't help but notice the giant holes in the script for me we're underwater misses the mark is in its lack of a first act it's under investment in character development and it's a missed opportunity to explore Lovecraft's mythology further don't get me wrong I love that we get to see a beautiful rendition of Cthulhu but was disappointed that we didn't explore the cultures that worshipped him the ancient artifacts that hinted to a secret Dominion or the disturbing accounts of otherworldly phenomena from those that were unfortunate to hear his call despite the satisfying adventure that underwater is unlike alien the abyss and Leviathan which all heavily influenced the film and spent much of their respective runtimes exploring their characters and the world they inhabited underwater begins with the inciting incident and doesn't give us any real context to work with week you said it buddy I wonder why don't have more screen time in the movie never mind mate why not the voting time to explore its characters what their relationships were to each other and how they behaved under normal circumstances we're sort of robbed of an opportunity to witness any character growth which would have made the narrative more compelling for a survival horror movie to work really well we need to be more invested in the characters the abyss alien and even the laughably camp Leviathan do this marvelously we see the survivors in all three movies working together in their normal habitat before the inciting incident we learn who the characters are and what their relationships were to each other long before the main obstacle to their survival is introduced it's not until we get this baseline that we see them getting affected by said obstacle before finally seeing their active attempts to overcome it but when it comes to underwater there is no first act and we the characters while they're dealing with a calamitous crisis and as a result it feels like we're not watching a team but a group of unrelated people dealing with a significant problem because of these issues underwater feels more like a watered down alien and a hamstrung prequel to Cloverfield than a true adaptation to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos having said that I still really enjoyed this movie I'm curious to hear what you guys thought about the film so please share these in the comments below and a huge thanks to everyone who requested we explore underwater don't forget to hit subscribe and click the notification icon to stay up to date on all my content and if there's anything else you'd like to request please don't hesitate to ask as always it's been a pleasure nyet here with film comics explained thanks for stopping by [Music] you [Music]

Channel: FilmComicsExplained

Views: 1,757,331

Rating: 4.9294429 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: yEQCrq8LBe4

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020