Weak and leaky horror about awful people trying to save themselves from a sinking motor, lifted only by a giant crustacean
Legendary schlock producer Samuel Z Arkoff confessed that he frequently came up with ideas for posters first, movies second. It is in that context that I can’t get too angry at Submerged, a dense, low-budget genre picture with very few thrills. Its poster image – a hand pressed against the window of a car that’s plunging underwater, with the tagline “You can’t scream and hold your breath at the same time” – is truly a work of brilliance. I can only blame myself for thinking the movie could measure up.
In my head, I’d conjured some gonzo real-time indie spirit experiment, such as Rodrigo Cortés’s Buried, the Ryan Reynolds film set entirely within a coffin. (It works!) If not that, at least a cheeseball flick such as Airport ’77, one of the great, dumb disaster movies, in which a jet airliner sinks into the Bermuda Triangle. (Passengers on this plane include Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Christopher Lee, Joseph Cotten and Olivia de Havilland; yeah, you need to see this one if you haven’t already.) Sadly, neither is what’s docking here. While we open with dazed individuals in a crashed limousine as it begins to take on water, Submerged’s frequent flashbacks eventually reveal a tiresome crime plot rife with soporific acting and unremarkable dialogue.
Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 hours ago.
Legendary schlock producer Samuel Z Arkoff confessed that he frequently came up with ideas for posters first, movies second. It is in that context that I can’t get too angry at Submerged, a dense, low-budget genre picture with very few thrills. Its poster image – a hand pressed against the window of a car that’s plunging underwater, with the tagline “You can’t scream and hold your breath at the same time” – is truly a work of brilliance. I can only blame myself for thinking the movie could measure up.
In my head, I’d conjured some gonzo real-time indie spirit experiment, such as Rodrigo Cortés’s Buried, the Ryan Reynolds film set entirely within a coffin. (It works!) If not that, at least a cheeseball flick such as Airport ’77, one of the great, dumb disaster movies, in which a jet airliner sinks into the Bermuda Triangle. (Passengers on this plane include Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Christopher Lee, Joseph Cotten and Olivia de Havilland; yeah, you need to see this one if you haven’t already.) Sadly, neither is what’s docking here. While we open with dazed individuals in a crashed limousine as it begins to take on water, Submerged’s frequent flashbacks eventually reveal a tiresome crime plot rife with soporific acting and unremarkable dialogue.
Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 hours ago.