William Eubank’s Underwater was a masterful display of intensity across the board. A creature feature that moves at breakneck pace, it starred Kristen Stewart as mechanical engineer Norah Price, who is part of the crew of a drilling facility at the bottom of the ocean in the near future. A crisis forces the remaining crew to undergo a dangerous trek across the Mariana Trench, where they discover that they’re not alone.
When it was released in January 2020, Underwater was praised in horror circles for its mile-a-minute first act and the deeply claustrophobic cinematography, though it was dinged by critics and rejected by general audiences. But despite its tepid release, Underwater still managed to pull off one of the biggest surprises in modern horror history — an achievement that Lovecraft fans had feared might never happen.
