Underwater

Near future sci-fi, set on a drilling rig at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, that pretty much does what it says on the tin. There is no exposition, other than the title sequence, and the action is relentless all the way through the commendably lean 90 minute running time.

Within the first five minutes, the station is rocked by an earthquake and starts flooding, leading to a desperate race to escape before the reactor melts down. The production design draws heavily on the grubby industrial aesthetic of films like Alien, from the satisfyingly chunky pressure suits to the motion tracker and the tense scene of watching other characters in peril via multiple helmet camera feeds.

The final act takes a nice twist into a very different genre (to say more would be to spoil things), but I just wish there had been a little more time to establish the characters before killing them off (spoiler - the black guy gets it first).

The overall effect was a little bit like the game Still Wakes the Deep and its DLC Siren’s Rest, although that was set on a 1970s North Sea oil rig. I really wanted to see the characters in Underwater find some files or audio logs that explained a little of what was going on, rather than the infuriatingly brief hints and the dialogue that was hard to follow in places.

Worth a watch if you have Disney.