Rolling in the Deep

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Underwater opens with an itsy-bitsy spider crawling out of a sink drain to take a good long look-see at Kristen Stewart, a soft-butch scientist standing there brushing her teeth in her underpants (and scientists in their underpants is just the first of Underwater's many loving Alien nods). Kristen Stewart looks back, a little awed by the eight-legger, seeing as how she's in the middle of explaining to us in voice-over that we are currently deep deep under the ocean's surface, losing our minds one lightless day at a time. What the hell is this little bugger doing down there so deep?

As a Big City Boy who's come to intimately understand and dread the idea that if you see one bug crawling out of your wall you know there are a million twitchy things on its immediate other side, our Soft Butch Scientist would be better served to look upon the spider with a little less awe and a little more frantic oh-no's-es, but the movie doesn't give her a chance either way since Underwater fires first with a big bang and barely looks back for its swift ninety minute tire squeal of a seabed run barreling towards oblivion, and if we're open in mind and by tentacle we're all the better for it.

Take too much time to look around and you'd see the thing's constructed out of junky parts, seams splitting where common sense should be. Characters insect-thigh thin and motivation-less plot machinations abound. But did I care? 

Reader, I did not care. Underwater knows what it is made from, and I love these spare parts. I love the big budget draped like jellyfish-flesh over my favorites of nonsense, I love the realization that Vincent Cassel looks like a sexy Anglerfish -- I love it all, Lovecraftian doodads deep-throating our heroes as the blood pudding swirls down below, feigning people shapes, and the like. Oh a goof and a lark and a big dangerous beastie disaster mess, Underwater turns out -- or turns inside out like so many decompressed and exploding character actors -- is so totally my jam. A good time was had by some! This some!