Underwater (2020)

directed by: William Eubank
written by: Brian Duffield & Adam Cozad
photographed by: Bojan Bazelli
music by: Marco Beltrami and Brandon Roberts
edited by: Brian Berdan, William Hoy & Todd E. Miller
stars: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, T.J. Miller
imdb

It would be interesting to see someday a 'making of' of Underwater. This may help to understand what went wrong with this movie. Who had the idea to make another 'Alien in the sea'. Why it has this B movie feeling, without the freshness of good B cinema. 

Underwater begins with the collapse of the underwater station, without introduction. The first thought is that this a creative decision, but after a while you realize that they had nothing to explain about the characters or the station. Character development is not one of the strongest points of action movies, but it is rarely so poor like here. And usually the writers will try to make you empathize with one or more characters.  But it is difficult to empathize with anybody here. But if the screenplay and directing are not weak enough, Underwater suffers also from an annoying photography. A lot of movement, and a lot of darkness, the trick used in low budget cinema to hide 

The influence of James Cameron's Aliens (1986) and The Abyss (1989) are obvious, but Underwater lacks Cameron's skill for action, his control for cinematographic tempo.  Underwater also has a lot of similarities with Leviathan (1989), a movie about a crew of miners in an underwater facility that have to face a monster... Sounds familiar?

The group of survivors spend most of the movie moving between buildings, and we are never completely sure where they are. The movie gets a little better towards the end, maybe because it tries to clone Alien (1979), although Stewart trying to emulate Sigourney Weaver doesn't help.