Review of Below (2002) by Mike N — 05 Jun 2014

Pleasant surprise right here. I always say this, but I don't ever go in to a movie expecting for it to suck. But there are certain movies where I'm almost "forced" to watch them in the sense they've either been on my Netflix queue for too long, or I'm in the mood for something of that ilk.

This is one of those movies, I wasn't really intrigued, at all, by it and the concept but I decided to give it a watch. Not that I was blown away by this, but I found it to actually be a pretty good movie outside of some goofy moments near the end and some of the convoluted plot elements like finding out what really happened to Captain Winters.

I don't think the film does a great job at properly explaining what was going on with Captain Winters. Eventually you connect the dots, but it's not because they did a good job at exposition. With that said, I still liked this film's atmosphere and most of its storytelling.

The claustrophobic nature of being in such a closed-quarters setting certainly helped a lot with the storytelling. It helps when Brice's psyche, and Loomis to a much lesser extent, starts to unravel.

He becomes obsessed and paranoid with what happened to Winters, to the point he believes that Winters is haunting the submarine in order to bring it down with him. Brice would rather sink the ship with everybody on board, than to face the consequences of his actions.

The film also does a good job at throwing some red herrings in there, it's not necessarily THAT hard to figure out, but the film does make an effort to lead you down a path when it's clearly heading in the other direction.

This is a psychological horror film at its core and it definitely works for most of it, builds some good suspense and tension. I was into the film right from the start, something I wasn't really expecting.

But props to the screenwriters, including Darren Aronofsky, in managing to tell a compelling story, flaws be damned. I enjoyed this film quite a bit, it's got some corny moments near the end but those aren't really that detrimental to the final quality of the film.

If you're a fan of atmospheric, moody horror then this would be right up your alley.